what are we doing here

When is a dogpile a dogpile and when is it just a smokescreen? That's a question I've been mulling this evening. It's come up a couple of times the last little while, seemingly in defense of a well known developer who had a blog post questioned for being a really bad take and, rather than engaging with any of the criticism, they just left the social media platform (mastodon).

I could easily be wrong, but pointing and crying something akin to "Dogpile!" just feels like the social media version of a SLAPP suit. SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation and it works a lot like it sounds: using the law to prevent real or valid criticism (or whistle blowing or similar types of behavior). Wikipedia can give you the details but the long and the short of it is a strategic manipulation of public perception in favor of entities with some measure of power and privilege. Might their really be a dogpile? Sure, just like their are legitimate lawsuits. People critiquing a public post is not a dogpile though. If someone puts something out there publicly it's open to criticism.

People might completely come after me for this post; that's OK because I'm publicly posting it. If they do, and I take a moment to hear, I might even learn something, whether or not I agree with the criticism. That's how this all is supposed to work. My views on life have evolved a lot over the years and much of that is from taking the time to learn from others, even when they critiqued me or even when they were overly harsh (according to whatever way my fragile ego might have been measuring harshness at the time).

Personally, I think the more dangerous move is giving in to the urge to buddy up next to the power and privilege that wants to keep things quiet and measured. I've been there too. And, I watched it bite me in the ass and completely uproot my family. It's not worth it for anyone. In my situation we chose to go the quieter route in dealing with toxic leadership and found that instead, all we were doing was giving toxic leadership time to position themselves as a victim, there in directing ire intently away from the toxicity and onto those that brought it up quietly in the background.

There is a pattern there that is important: in criticism, critique, calling out toxicity or similar there is a tendency by those with privilege and/or power to position themselves as victim (ie, "oh the mastodon dogpile!"). Like the sleight of hand of a magician they can then turn people away from the bad thing and point at something/someone else as the bad thing instead. There's a psychological name for this: DARVO - Deny, Attack, Reverse Victom and Offender. It happens in high stakes situations and low stakes situations (and should be called out where it happens).

Of course there is nuance to situations; not everything has the stakes involved that we experienced. Sometimes though that is because reality is masked by our privilege. Let's take the aforementioned developer that left Mastodon. It's easy to consider his post as low stakes but often that's considered from positions of privilege; I can see it as low stakes because I don't experience the racism or transphobia or homophobia that individuals like Bob and Van might be deeply committed to. Considering all that's going on over the past few weeks in my nation of birth (releasing video games that let people hate on immigrants, military uniforms modeled off of Starship Troopers and mirroring a little too closely another historical uniform, etc, etc), speaking up matters. Actually, speaking up should have mattered 30 years ago when Bob and Van were doing their thing. If it had, maybe things would be different. Maybe hate would be anathema in public life. It's not though and publicly being willing to say something is important.

I lost a significant chunk of who I was in the situation I mentioned above. Thankfully, I am recovering but I have means to help with that. Not everyone does. A part of that recovery process is a commitment to speak up to the bad takes and injustices and similar even if the nuanced centrists out there would prefer I look the other way. Being anti-fascist, being anti-racist, being anti-hate means saying something and doing something (especially when it's uncomfortable).