Doodling about facts
Having said all that, I think the biggest single problem with online debate, including fannish debate, isn't logic; it's bullshit.
Here I mean the Henri Frankfort definition of bullshit: a claim made by someone who doesn't know or care if it's true. It doesn't matter how exacting your reasoning is, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Rose's dimensional cannon broke down the walls of reality, she abandoned Mickey at the end of Boomtown, the Sixth Doctor pushed two guards into an acid bath, etc. Fans rarely bother to pull out the DVD or pick up the book or even Google the bloody thing. (And this is without getting into cherrypicking the facts which fit our views while ignoring anything which awkwardly contradicts them.)
Well, these debates aren't really that important, so it doesn't matter if we talk a lot of crap out of sheer bloody laziness. Does it? It's not as though anyone ever ends up seething or in tears, or that friendships get wrecked. Is it?
I picked up a book today about the attack on research into violence against women by conservative, anti-feminist women's organisations, which took me back to the fun I had in the nineties on Usenet. My feminism began as debunking; I wrote essays on the research into date rape and domestic violence, specifically to counter the online lies. These were lies, too, not just bullshit - deliberate distortions of the truth, sometimes clumsy, sometimes subtle. I called other people on their facts, and they called me on mine, and I learned very quickly not to post something unless I'd verified it for myself - even if that information had come from someone on my side.
Those debates were actually important - well, more important than whether Gwen is an evil slut, anyway - and what they taught me about facts and logic has been invaluable. (What they taught me about how to intereact with other human beings, rather less so.) I fret a little that fans lack a basic, healthy scepticism which is crucial in analysing what politicians and the press feed us every day. We just believe any old thing. And we're suppose to be the ones with the ridiculously detailed knowledge of the show, the ones who nitpick!
Here I mean the Henri Frankfort definition of bullshit: a claim made by someone who doesn't know or care if it's true. It doesn't matter how exacting your reasoning is, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Rose's dimensional cannon broke down the walls of reality, she abandoned Mickey at the end of Boomtown, the Sixth Doctor pushed two guards into an acid bath, etc. Fans rarely bother to pull out the DVD or pick up the book or even Google the bloody thing. (And this is without getting into cherrypicking the facts which fit our views while ignoring anything which awkwardly contradicts them.)
Well, these debates aren't really that important, so it doesn't matter if we talk a lot of crap out of sheer bloody laziness. Does it? It's not as though anyone ever ends up seething or in tears, or that friendships get wrecked. Is it?
I picked up a book today about the attack on research into violence against women by conservative, anti-feminist women's organisations, which took me back to the fun I had in the nineties on Usenet. My feminism began as debunking; I wrote essays on the research into date rape and domestic violence, specifically to counter the online lies. These were lies, too, not just bullshit - deliberate distortions of the truth, sometimes clumsy, sometimes subtle. I called other people on their facts, and they called me on mine, and I learned very quickly not to post something unless I'd verified it for myself - even if that information had come from someone on my side.
Those debates were actually important - well, more important than whether Gwen is an evil slut, anyway - and what they taught me about facts and logic has been invaluable. (What they taught me about how to intereact with other human beings, rather less so.) I fret a little that fans lack a basic, healthy scepticism which is crucial in analysing what politicians and the press feed us every day. We just believe any old thing. And we're suppose to be the ones with the ridiculously detailed knowledge of the show, the ones who nitpick!