An Effort to Measure the Metafilter Speed-of-Jerk
(I will disclaim first that I'm aware that Metafilter's comments threads are really clean compared to many online communities. The thing is, I usually avoid those communities! So when Metafilter threads develop patches of toxicity, it's obviously going to be somewhat more noticeable to me.)
In a Metafilter thread following a post about something bad happening to someone or a group of people - for example, racial discrimination, hurricanes, medical bankruptcy, rape, hit in crotch by meteorite - how quickly does the first comment appear that:
* Downplays the bad thing's importance?
* Suggests that the victim(s) deserved it?
* States that "everyone already knows" about the problem, with the implication that discussing it is pointless?
* Suggests that efforts at fixing the problem will either make no difference or "only make things worse?"
* Questions the motives or legitimacy of an organization or person complaining about or working to resist said -ism?
Additionally, how does the identify of the bad-thing-afflicted group affect the speed and density with which Metafilter's disdain presents itself? Or, to rephrase: With whom does Metafilter sympathize the most, and with whom the least?
Downplayed Within The First Five Comments
* Iowa loophole voids mortgage (bank, screwed over by non-bank-type private individuals) - #1
* Kiki Kannibal (teenaged girl who put risqué photos and videos of herself online, stalked and raped) - #1
* The internet is too big to take on (female political writer, online harassment) - #1
* Unfit counsel (guy convicted of murder, whose lawyer was sleeping with his wife) - #1
* "Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists as the greatest threat to the American public." (people in New Orleans (mostly black), widespread systemic police violence and corruption) - #2
* The cold, incompetent stupidity of the system (mostly non-white people, detainment and abuse at Guantanamo) - #3
* Portraits of Iraqis by Daniel Heyman (Iraqis, detainment and abuse at Abu Ghraib) - #4
* Think again, again (the poor, undereducation and resulting self-reinforcing self-destructive patterns of behavior) - #5
Downplayed A Little Further On
* Asian ceiling? (high-achieving Asian kids in the US, not getting into good colleges) - #14
* No Marriage Until Gay Marriage Is Legal (gay people, illegality of gay marriage in Kentucky) - #16
* So, I'm not a racist but... (it's a video of a guy explaining his strategy for telling someone they said something racist) - #18
* Climategate (the planet, that thing that's happening) - #20
* THIS POST DESIGNED TO CREATE A MEFI CIVIL WAR (Weird Al, -ed around by Lady Gaga) - #20
* Another April 20th, another accident while gathering hydrocarbons (Pennsylvanians, pollution) - #21
* Vaccination-autism debate turns nasty (recovered drug addict, online harassment) - #30 (Not actually on-topic; some drive-by misogyny.)
* 83% male with an average net worth of $5 million (Americans who aren't rich white dudes, inadequate congressional representation) - #39
The Ones For Which I'm Not Sufficiently Fluent In Canadian Politics To Recognize A Dis
* More voices you won’t hear in the election campaign (Canadian voters, Harper shenanigans)
The Ones With No Immediately-Visible Jerkdom (Though I Didn't Go All The Way Down For A Couple of These)
* 2011 on track to be the worst year for wildfires in Texas history (Texans, drought and fires) - None in particular, but from #6 on there's a lot of gloating about the governor's presumed discomfort.
* Making Ebenezer Scrooge look like an ok guy (foster children, proposed state-enforced public shaming) - I don't see any!
* This is what Bill Watterson has been up to (cartoonist, Parkinson's disease) - Don't see any!
* Iraq Vet Who Advocated For Others Kills Himself (American Iraq-war veteran, depression and PTSD compounded by limited aid from VA system) - Don't see any.
* Captured (Vietnamese people and American vets, the Vietnam War in general) - None. The conversation does end up being more about American vets, though.
* Roger Ebert: Remaking My Voice (Ebert, cancer) - None.
* R.I.P. Gerard Smith (bassist, cancer) - None that I see.
Conclusions that we can draw from this data, keeping in mind that we can't actually draw any conclusions from 1) this small a sample size and 2) my subjective opinion of what constitutes jerkdom:
1) Out of the eight posts that got a downplay within the first five comments, five of them were people (or banks) wronged by the American justice system. By that measure, Metafilter is least sympathetic to those Kept Down By The Man. Women are the runners-up at two first-comment downplays.
2) However, one of those two - a teenaged girl who was, in order, physically threatened, raped by a pedophile, had her house vandalized and her cat murdered, and continues to be stalked and threatened by a second pedophile - gets nothing but abuse until comment #30. I assume that one of those 29 is the author of that New York Times article.
Seriously, this is pretty horrifying.
3) Three of the first-downplays are from the same person, and s/he pops up to do the Lord's work in some of the others further downthread. S/he's there very early on in the above-mentioned slut-shaming thread.
4) Judging by the no-jerkdom list, Metafilter is most sympathetic to guys with serious health problems (3 hits), children without webcams (2 hits), veterans, civilian victims of war (except for the ones detained by the American military within the past decade), and Texans who aren't the governor of Texas.
This post was cross-posted from Dreamwidth. Please comment there using OpenID. (Comments:
)
In a Metafilter thread following a post about something bad happening to someone or a group of people - for example, racial discrimination, hurricanes, medical bankruptcy, rape, hit in crotch by meteorite - how quickly does the first comment appear that:
* Downplays the bad thing's importance?
* Suggests that the victim(s) deserved it?
* States that "everyone already knows" about the problem, with the implication that discussing it is pointless?
* Suggests that efforts at fixing the problem will either make no difference or "only make things worse?"
* Questions the motives or legitimacy of an organization or person complaining about or working to resist said -ism?
Additionally, how does the identify of the bad-thing-afflicted group affect the speed and density with which Metafilter's disdain presents itself? Or, to rephrase: With whom does Metafilter sympathize the most, and with whom the least?
Downplayed Within The First Five Comments
* Iowa loophole voids mortgage (bank, screwed over by non-bank-type private individuals) - #1
* Kiki Kannibal (teenaged girl who put risqué photos and videos of herself online, stalked and raped) - #1
* The internet is too big to take on (female political writer, online harassment) - #1
* Unfit counsel (guy convicted of murder, whose lawyer was sleeping with his wife) - #1
* "Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists as the greatest threat to the American public." (people in New Orleans (mostly black), widespread systemic police violence and corruption) - #2
* The cold, incompetent stupidity of the system (mostly non-white people, detainment and abuse at Guantanamo) - #3
* Portraits of Iraqis by Daniel Heyman (Iraqis, detainment and abuse at Abu Ghraib) - #4
* Think again, again (the poor, undereducation and resulting self-reinforcing self-destructive patterns of behavior) - #5
Downplayed A Little Further On
* Asian ceiling? (high-achieving Asian kids in the US, not getting into good colleges) - #14
* No Marriage Until Gay Marriage Is Legal (gay people, illegality of gay marriage in Kentucky) - #16
* So, I'm not a racist but... (it's a video of a guy explaining his strategy for telling someone they said something racist) - #18
* Climategate (the planet, that thing that's happening) - #20
* THIS POST DESIGNED TO CREATE A MEFI CIVIL WAR (Weird Al, -ed around by Lady Gaga) - #20
* Another April 20th, another accident while gathering hydrocarbons (Pennsylvanians, pollution) - #21
* Vaccination-autism debate turns nasty (recovered drug addict, online harassment) - #30 (Not actually on-topic; some drive-by misogyny.)
* 83% male with an average net worth of $5 million (Americans who aren't rich white dudes, inadequate congressional representation) - #39
The Ones For Which I'm Not Sufficiently Fluent In Canadian Politics To Recognize A Dis
* More voices you won’t hear in the election campaign (Canadian voters, Harper shenanigans)
The Ones With No Immediately-Visible Jerkdom (Though I Didn't Go All The Way Down For A Couple of These)
* 2011 on track to be the worst year for wildfires in Texas history (Texans, drought and fires) - None in particular, but from #6 on there's a lot of gloating about the governor's presumed discomfort.
* Making Ebenezer Scrooge look like an ok guy (foster children, proposed state-enforced public shaming) - I don't see any!
* This is what Bill Watterson has been up to (cartoonist, Parkinson's disease) - Don't see any!
* Iraq Vet Who Advocated For Others Kills Himself (American Iraq-war veteran, depression and PTSD compounded by limited aid from VA system) - Don't see any.
* Captured (Vietnamese people and American vets, the Vietnam War in general) - None. The conversation does end up being more about American vets, though.
* Roger Ebert: Remaking My Voice (Ebert, cancer) - None.
* R.I.P. Gerard Smith (bassist, cancer) - None that I see.
Conclusions that we can draw from this data, keeping in mind that we can't actually draw any conclusions from 1) this small a sample size and 2) my subjective opinion of what constitutes jerkdom:
1) Out of the eight posts that got a downplay within the first five comments, five of them were people (or banks) wronged by the American justice system. By that measure, Metafilter is least sympathetic to those Kept Down By The Man. Women are the runners-up at two first-comment downplays.
2) However, one of those two - a teenaged girl who was, in order, physically threatened, raped by a pedophile, had her house vandalized and her cat murdered, and continues to be stalked and threatened by a second pedophile - gets nothing but abuse until comment #30. I assume that one of those 29 is the author of that New York Times article.
Seriously, this is pretty horrifying.
3) Three of the first-downplays are from the same person, and s/he pops up to do the Lord's work in some of the others further downthread. S/he's there very early on in the above-mentioned slut-shaming thread.
4) Judging by the no-jerkdom list, Metafilter is most sympathetic to guys with serious health problems (3 hits), children without webcams (2 hits), veterans, civilian victims of war (except for the ones detained by the American military within the past decade), and Texans who aren't the governor of Texas.
This post was cross-posted from Dreamwidth. Please comment there using OpenID. (Comments:
)