This reminds me of all of the stories that popped up circa-2020 about how awful it was to be an X person (non-white male) in the workplace. A few pieces detailed truly awful behavior, but many more detailed minor things like someone not listening in a meeting, being dismissive, asking assistants and interns to clean conference rooms or do lunch orders... aka, very run of the mill things that everyone - regardless of race or sex - has dealt with since office work became a thing.
And the request is always to "understand" the perspective of person X, but rarely is it suggested that person X try to understand the perspective of supposed "people in power." Because I think they'd find that having a pale penis does not equal a lifetime of people listening and agreeing with everything you say. It still sucks.
The funny thing is, if we stopped trying to legislate "who has it worst" and instead agreed that we all have it some levels of shitty, we might just be able to work together and figure out how to make it less shitty.
It 100% is political, which makes it funnier when people like her say it isn't. Adults who can't live In the world where sometimes people are mean to you like you are a 3rd grader are so funny to me
The trope that white males have this wildly different life experience is one of the most dumbfounding things in our world.
No one has ever had the luxury of living a life in two different bodies and comparing the experiences. If you are told in your formative years that the world is against you and you have a target on your back, you will constantly translate life that way.
And what the hell does a white male CEO of a Fortune 500 company have to do with a white homeless man? Do you think they are treated the same on a daily basis by people around them?
Do you think a black gang member on the southside of Chicago has anything in common with the children of an NBA player?
Or is all of this segmenting of society just really dumb?
Also who do you think has a better life - a 15 year old straight white kid who's parents are broke and drug addicts or a 15 year old gay black kid who's parents work on Wall Street and live on the upper east side in the townhouse they own
It's almost as if your circumstances in life are multifactorial and not binary.
Let's take it a step further. Deshaun Watson vs Jameis Winston. Both straight black men. Both NFL Quarterbacks. Both from the south.
One has a never-ending list of awful things that he's done. One also has a list of bad behavior in his past, but has since matured and is a ray of positivity. The public perception of these two men is the polar opposite.
The same comparison applies to Tommy Lee Jones vs Matthew McConaughey. Both straight white male movie stars. One is known to be an asshole and one is has a very high Q rating.
Maybe this kind of example is applicable to just about everyone on Earth? Maybe it's much more about what people put out into the world than their immutable characteristics?
Someone on Reddit said that BlueSky gives major "sportsball" vibes, and that it's a cringey happy place that is the Ted Lasso of websites (derogatory). Made me laugh.
People like Richard Deitsch (and Beck to a lesser extent) simply don’t get it or don’t want to get it. They are unable to adjust their priors and instead just play the progressive “hits” from 2014-2022. He is your typical coastal elite NY Times snob who kowtows to a now dying paradigm. If females truly take the brunt of it on social media, show me some verifiable data over a large sample size and not cherry picked anecdotes. Hopefully the guilty white male trope dies a quick and painful death, it’s time to move back to reality and solve real issues.
The fundamental problem with Twitter(/X) will be fully replicated on BlueSky because it has nothing to do with moderation (or the lack thereof) or even who is on the platform.
The problem with Twitter/X/BlueSky/Threads/Mastodon are the fundamental structures of the platforms: the combination of short public posts and replies, endless threading, anonymity, low barriers to entry and exit, and the ability to post instantly and continuously will inevitably lead to snark, tribalism, and incivility when discussing controversial issues.
And while all threaded discussion platforms and forums (including Facebook, Reddit, and even these Substack comments) will have this problem to some degree when it comes to controversial issues, Twitter and its clones are almost perfectly designed to drive incivility. Which doesn't mean that they can't be guilty pleasures, but they will ever and always be hellscapes when it comes to politics.
Also the journalism industry has massively contracted and may contract more, still. If Bluesky becomes the new place where a bunch of Tracy Flicks play musical chairs, it’s going to be very mean, too.
To be clear, Mina’s career has little to do with her race and more to do with how sexualized she is, which is related to, but not wholly, about her race. Tale as old as time.
I think it's the effort her (largely male) colleagues make to tell you how great she is, when the reality is that she's decent but she's made out to be some kind of Charles Barkley/Stephen A type figure who you'd tune in to watch them
She always just seemed fine to me nothing special, and her race/gender are why people act like she is amazing. The idea she isn't benefiting from DEI is sort of hilarious to me.
This type of thing is one of the ways progressives really lose normie people, because it is clearly bullshit/a lie. No it isn't harder to make it in sports media if you look like Mina Kimes versus IDK Chris Vernon. And the constant refrain that it is so such a bald faced lie that you lose a ton of people when you repeat it.
Doesn't mean their aren't downsides to being Kimes, but there are also absolutely downsides to being a generic white man especially the last 20 years or so. But people on the left are just forbidden from committing that thoughtcrime.
"All happy Twitter users are alike (not tweeting); each unhappy Twitter user is unhappy in their own way."
I feel this all the way down in my plums. The wild wild west aspect is what I love about Twitter - always will. Most violence and extreme rhetoric was resolved with mute/block. It is damn funny watching someone struggle to accept twitter currently is the closest town square equivalent.
Meh, I'm sure Mina can handle herself, and could put up with this if it were worthwhile/needed, but I find you're a bit dismissive on this one.
A dear friend is an immigrant. He's middle-aged and has been here for decades, a politically conservative lawyer happily settled in Texas. He's of Armenian stock, so only slightly brown - you'd not even think of him as an immigrant if you weren't trying.
We were discussing a constitutional law matter, not especially controversial and not in an inflammatory manner but not endorsing whatever claptrap MAGA is suddenly pushing.
I clicked on his tweet starting the discussion and saw several utterly racist and bigoted remarks - out of nowhere, bluecheck dudes telling him he shouldn't be here and bad things about his parents and children.
I asked him what the heck was going on. His response: "That's just Twitter nowadays."
I don't have this issue, and you don't either. But Mina did - as she explicitly says in the story - and my friend does, in a way that there's really no rhyme or reason for except (as Mina says) the bluecheck system makes it that way, and so really saddened and disgusted me.
You don't need to wring your hands like Deitsch or flee to BS if you're happy here. But there's no reason to discount what Mina says (I was originally taking a different tenor in my reply until I saw she raised this issue explicitly).
Indeed, respectfully and truly with love and appreciation, it veers a bit toward reflexive contrarianism - based not in actual insight but, it seems to me, a kind of unthinking anti-anti-racism impulse to disbelieve and discount someone else, though they're a good faith interlocutor and you have no real basis to do so.
We are all prone to such fallacies. But it is a fallacy - an error in thinking - at least in my view. I think you should steer away from, or at least recognize them for what they are - impulses based on intuition, but without any actual basis in any particular instance, better kept to podcast speculation or an inquisitive Note or Tweet unless and until your premises are confirmed.
I wrote it for Ethan. He was an English major at Berkeley. He'll be fine; he can get the thrust of even a rushed, jumbled, and bumbled comment like mine.
I understand the issue now. I need to change my style to communicate with graduates of non-T14 schools.
I slummed it by attending a non-HYS Ivy because they had a dual-degree program - two years there then two years at the Sorbonne and I'd get law degrees in both countries.
It has worked out well for me. But I wonder if I missed doors that never opened because I did not graduate from HYS. I'll bet their graduates never fuck up Substack comments to be incomprehensible to graduates of law schools at prestigious state schools, and and other top-15 denizens.
Mina literally called out and lied about Outkick and then never responded to the accusations she made about them or provided any evidence to her accusations.
She also happily retweeted a hit piece about Dave Portnoy that was false and never backtracked.
She’s brought this on herself. She loves the victim card.
Yes, there's apparently quite a lot of people who dislike and attack her for these reasons. They did not feature in Ethan's article, but if that's the motivation it obviously changes both of our analyses.
I've always liked her and thought highly of her myself, so I will stand by my original comment and opinion for now. But I appreciate the heads up and will keep my eyes open for this going forward.
Isn’t Mina half white? She used to be great with Karabell on espn fantasy radio in her salad days at the worldwide leader or when she showed up as a Wednesday Addams lookalike on the old Lebatard program. Now she’s been reduced sadly to a far left acolyte espousing the most diaphanous talking points. The irony is she’s very high paid yet has so much enmity toward capitalism, always funny to see.
Mina is a typical Yale grad. Comes from privilege but likes to act self righteous. People like her love to make everything about identity because they don’t want to talk about the real inequality, class. Because she’s on the wrong side of that privilege.
When asked by people why i dont have any socials, i say b/c my job doesnt require it and i’m not a 14-50 yr old girl. Its true for me and a bit insulting to the person that asks especially it they are a male. Smug is good sometimes
Yeah I had Facebook for about 6 months when it first started 07? and was like "this is a waste of time" ditto Twitter. Have to say I feel like I missed nothing.
I wonder how Awful Announcing would ascribe the social media to experience for black (Black?) women in sports media like Sage Steele or Hispanic women like Michelle Tafoya?
My hope is that one day the universal response to "woke" assertions will be reduced to immediate dismissal via something pithy a la, "No, f**k you" or "That's so f**king stupid, shut the f**k up" or "Get out, go away". It's such a waste having to giving a reasoned response to a position so willfully tortured and stupid.
This reminds me of all of the stories that popped up circa-2020 about how awful it was to be an X person (non-white male) in the workplace. A few pieces detailed truly awful behavior, but many more detailed minor things like someone not listening in a meeting, being dismissive, asking assistants and interns to clean conference rooms or do lunch orders... aka, very run of the mill things that everyone - regardless of race or sex - has dealt with since office work became a thing.
And the request is always to "understand" the perspective of person X, but rarely is it suggested that person X try to understand the perspective of supposed "people in power." Because I think they'd find that having a pale penis does not equal a lifetime of people listening and agreeing with everything you say. It still sucks.
The funny thing is, if we stopped trying to legislate "who has it worst" and instead agreed that we all have it some levels of shitty, we might just be able to work together and figure out how to make it less shitty.
"having a pale penis" - ok we're just slipping that in as if that's how white males self-identify from now on? lol
It’s the first thing I talk about with strangers to let them know everything they’ll ever need to understand about me
It 100% is political, which makes it funnier when people like her say it isn't. Adults who can't live In the world where sometimes people are mean to you like you are a 3rd grader are so funny to me
The trope that white males have this wildly different life experience is one of the most dumbfounding things in our world.
No one has ever had the luxury of living a life in two different bodies and comparing the experiences. If you are told in your formative years that the world is against you and you have a target on your back, you will constantly translate life that way.
And what the hell does a white male CEO of a Fortune 500 company have to do with a white homeless man? Do you think they are treated the same on a daily basis by people around them?
Do you think a black gang member on the southside of Chicago has anything in common with the children of an NBA player?
Or is all of this segmenting of society just really dumb?
Also who do you think has a better life - a 15 year old straight white kid who's parents are broke and drug addicts or a 15 year old gay black kid who's parents work on Wall Street and live on the upper east side in the townhouse they own
It's almost as if your circumstances in life are multifactorial and not binary.
Let's take it a step further. Deshaun Watson vs Jameis Winston. Both straight black men. Both NFL Quarterbacks. Both from the south.
One has a never-ending list of awful things that he's done. One also has a list of bad behavior in his past, but has since matured and is a ray of positivity. The public perception of these two men is the polar opposite.
The same comparison applies to Tommy Lee Jones vs Matthew McConaughey. Both straight white male movie stars. One is known to be an asshole and one is has a very high Q rating.
Maybe this kind of example is applicable to just about everyone on Earth? Maybe it's much more about what people put out into the world than their immutable characteristics?
Come on man, you’re using logic. The woke mafia just uses theory and feelings
Someone on Reddit said that BlueSky gives major "sportsball" vibes, and that it's a cringey happy place that is the Ted Lasso of websites (derogatory). Made me laugh.
So it’s sweet and funny the first few times you log on and eventually becomes long winded and preachy the longer you hang around.
People like Richard Deitsch (and Beck to a lesser extent) simply don’t get it or don’t want to get it. They are unable to adjust their priors and instead just play the progressive “hits” from 2014-2022. He is your typical coastal elite NY Times snob who kowtows to a now dying paradigm. If females truly take the brunt of it on social media, show me some verifiable data over a large sample size and not cherry picked anecdotes. Hopefully the guilty white male trope dies a quick and painful death, it’s time to move back to reality and solve real issues.
The fundamental problem with Twitter(/X) will be fully replicated on BlueSky because it has nothing to do with moderation (or the lack thereof) or even who is on the platform.
The problem with Twitter/X/BlueSky/Threads/Mastodon are the fundamental structures of the platforms: the combination of short public posts and replies, endless threading, anonymity, low barriers to entry and exit, and the ability to post instantly and continuously will inevitably lead to snark, tribalism, and incivility when discussing controversial issues.
And while all threaded discussion platforms and forums (including Facebook, Reddit, and even these Substack comments) will have this problem to some degree when it comes to controversial issues, Twitter and its clones are almost perfectly designed to drive incivility. Which doesn't mean that they can't be guilty pleasures, but they will ever and always be hellscapes when it comes to politics.
Also the journalism industry has massively contracted and may contract more, still. If Bluesky becomes the new place where a bunch of Tracy Flicks play musical chairs, it’s going to be very mean, too.
To be clear, Mina’s career has little to do with her race and more to do with how sexualized she is, which is related to, but not wholly, about her race. Tale as old as time.
I think it's the effort her (largely male) colleagues make to tell you how great she is, when the reality is that she's decent but she's made out to be some kind of Charles Barkley/Stephen A type figure who you'd tune in to watch them
She always just seemed fine to me nothing special, and her race/gender are why people act like she is amazing. The idea she isn't benefiting from DEI is sort of hilarious to me.
This type of thing is one of the ways progressives really lose normie people, because it is clearly bullshit/a lie. No it isn't harder to make it in sports media if you look like Mina Kimes versus IDK Chris Vernon. And the constant refrain that it is so such a bald faced lie that you lose a ton of people when you repeat it.
Doesn't mean their aren't downsides to being Kimes, but there are also absolutely downsides to being a generic white man especially the last 20 years or so. But people on the left are just forbidden from committing that thoughtcrime.
Who really cares what Mina Kimes has to say, anyway? Boring...
"All happy Twitter users are alike (not tweeting); each unhappy Twitter user is unhappy in their own way."
I feel this all the way down in my plums. The wild wild west aspect is what I love about Twitter - always will. Most violence and extreme rhetoric was resolved with mute/block. It is damn funny watching someone struggle to accept twitter currently is the closest town square equivalent.
Meh, I'm sure Mina can handle herself, and could put up with this if it were worthwhile/needed, but I find you're a bit dismissive on this one.
A dear friend is an immigrant. He's middle-aged and has been here for decades, a politically conservative lawyer happily settled in Texas. He's of Armenian stock, so only slightly brown - you'd not even think of him as an immigrant if you weren't trying.
We were discussing a constitutional law matter, not especially controversial and not in an inflammatory manner but not endorsing whatever claptrap MAGA is suddenly pushing.
I clicked on his tweet starting the discussion and saw several utterly racist and bigoted remarks - out of nowhere, bluecheck dudes telling him he shouldn't be here and bad things about his parents and children.
I asked him what the heck was going on. His response: "That's just Twitter nowadays."
I don't have this issue, and you don't either. But Mina did - as she explicitly says in the story - and my friend does, in a way that there's really no rhyme or reason for except (as Mina says) the bluecheck system makes it that way, and so really saddened and disgusted me.
You don't need to wring your hands like Deitsch or flee to BS if you're happy here. But there's no reason to discount what Mina says (I was originally taking a different tenor in my reply until I saw she raised this issue explicitly).
Indeed, respectfully and truly with love and appreciation, it veers a bit toward reflexive contrarianism - based not in actual insight but, it seems to me, a kind of unthinking anti-anti-racism impulse to disbelieve and discount someone else, though they're a good faith interlocutor and you have no real basis to do so.
We are all prone to such fallacies. But it is a fallacy - an error in thinking - at least in my view. I think you should steer away from, or at least recognize them for what they are - impulses based on intuition, but without any actual basis in any particular instance, better kept to podcast speculation or an inquisitive Note or Tweet unless and until your premises are confirmed.
I've read this reply 3x and I'm convinced that either I'm an idiot for not being able to follow it, or, I am glad that I don't read your Substack.
I wrote it for Ethan. He was an English major at Berkeley. He'll be fine; he can get the thrust of even a rushed, jumbled, and bumbled comment like mine.
And I'm a graduate of a top 15 law school who also basically writes for a living. I missed whatever thrust you were going for. Just saying.
I understand the issue now. I need to change my style to communicate with graduates of non-T14 schools.
I slummed it by attending a non-HYS Ivy because they had a dual-degree program - two years there then two years at the Sorbonne and I'd get law degrees in both countries.
It has worked out well for me. But I wonder if I missed doors that never opened because I did not graduate from HYS. I'll bet their graduates never fuck up Substack comments to be incomprehensible to graduates of law schools at prestigious state schools, and and other top-15 denizens.
My failures mount
Mina literally called out and lied about Outkick and then never responded to the accusations she made about them or provided any evidence to her accusations.
She also happily retweeted a hit piece about Dave Portnoy that was false and never backtracked.
She’s brought this on herself. She loves the victim card.
This - a large part of the abuse that comes her way is due to her lying/promoting bullshit and getting reasonably called on it is 'bullying' her
Yes, there's apparently quite a lot of people who dislike and attack her for these reasons. They did not feature in Ethan's article, but if that's the motivation it obviously changes both of our analyses.
I've always liked her and thought highly of her myself, so I will stand by my original comment and opinion for now. But I appreciate the heads up and will keep my eyes open for this going forward.
Isn’t Mina half white? She used to be great with Karabell on espn fantasy radio in her salad days at the worldwide leader or when she showed up as a Wednesday Addams lookalike on the old Lebatard program. Now she’s been reduced sadly to a far left acolyte espousing the most diaphanous talking points. The irony is she’s very high paid yet has so much enmity toward capitalism, always funny to see.
Mina is a typical Yale grad. Comes from privilege but likes to act self righteous. People like her love to make everything about identity because they don’t want to talk about the real inequality, class. Because she’s on the wrong side of that privilege.
When asked by people why i dont have any socials, i say b/c my job doesnt require it and i’m not a 14-50 yr old girl. Its true for me and a bit insulting to the person that asks especially it they are a male. Smug is good sometimes
Yeah I had Facebook for about 6 months when it first started 07? and was like "this is a waste of time" ditto Twitter. Have to say I feel like I missed nothing.
I wonder how Awful Announcing would ascribe the social media to experience for black (Black?) women in sports media like Sage Steele or Hispanic women like Michelle Tafoya?
I would guess it'd be along the lines of 'they don't count'
My hope is that one day the universal response to "woke" assertions will be reduced to immediate dismissal via something pithy a la, "No, f**k you" or "That's so f**king stupid, shut the f**k up" or "Get out, go away". It's such a waste having to giving a reasoned response to a position so willfully tortured and stupid.
All happy Twitter users are alike (not tweeting); each unhappy Twitter user is unhappy in their own way.
Fantastic line.
I'm tired of this all.