November 26, 2021 - 4:30pm
This week Vice World News ran a piece entitled “TikTok Has an Incel Problem”, documenting the platform’s apparent failure to remove instances of hate speech connected with incels, a community I’ve spent the past several years studying. The author writes:
The piece centred on an August report from Ciaran O’Connor at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue examining hate speech on TikTok that revealed “numerous examples” of misogyny, including videos like “3 worst types of cockblockers” and “Do you think makeup is a form of lying?” It also showed videos featuring men giving aggressive dating advice or disparaging women’s educational achievements.
It goes on to assert that TikTok must be aware of this “incel problem,” but has failed to either acknowledge it or remove all offensive content.
The headline is misleading; much of the content described in the piece is rude and misogynistic, but unaffiliated with any male supremacist ideology. When it is, the ideology in question is unrelated to incels — a distinction the author herself makes early in the piece when defining the #redpill hashtag, which she explains is used in “red-pill adjacent spaces,” by Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), another group within the manosphere, and is allowed on TikTok. This kind of taxonomy may sound like splitting hairs; an excuse for differentiating groups of toxic misogynists who should all be censored. But even if that is one’s position, it shouldn’t be done under the guise of preventing violent extremism.
Unlike incels, red-pilled communities like MGTOW or Pick-Up Artists (PUA) have never been connected with real-world violence, a fact likely understood by researcher Ciaran O’Connor. But he expresses a need for clarification:
It is somewhat ironic that “greater transparency” is expected of the platform when researchers of hate and extremism work so gleefully under the cover of night. Just a couple weeks earlier, another piece from Vice News, a short film titled “Hunting Down Incel Extremists” featured author and researcher Julia Ebner, also of ISD, describing her method of going “undercover” to infiltrate incel spaces. Ethical considerations aside, I question the results obtained from such an endeavour. In my own research I’ve found that “incel spaces” are filled with bravado and ironic humour. Conversely, they’ve been quite candid in their conversations with me, without any pretence.
This cloak-and-dagger approach to incels only erodes trust between researchers and a community already leery of their motives, and spreads panic among a public already living in fear. Experts are meant to be the measured, rational voice in a public discourse prone to inflammation. Not to feed right into it.
Journalists, for their part, are meant to judiciously consider which stories warrant the time and expense, and how to present them effectively and responsibly. Perhaps those days are over. But so much research and reportage just uses a massive dragnet that can’t distinguish bad taste jokes from true violent extremist sentiment. Beyond the sheer waste of it all, this has significant implications. If we obsessively focus on trivial and ambiguous speech offences in an effort to signal our virtue, we lose sight of the serious harms that face us.
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SubscribeI have nothing against Trump but I think he should step aside for DeSantis – frankly Trump has had his day.
No question. Trump is passed his prime, just too old, or certainly will be by 2024 for another presidential run.
I agree David. Trump is too old and too divisive. He has changed the world – I posted here yesterday that his positions which were considered lunatic in 2016 – like trade barriers against China and re-shoring of industry to the US – are now mainstream all over the world. And he has transformed the GOP – there will not be a primary candidate who is against The Wall for instance. He should be content with that and with being an elder statesman. Of course, I know he won’t and could well win the primary and lose the election to whichever horror the Dems put up.
Totally agree. DeSantis is the future and, I reckon, a pretty easy win for Republicans in ’24.
On the subject of boosters and vaxx status being a divider, I think this article really gets it wrong. First, because the mainstream view among republicans is, and has been for some time, that the vaccines should be a matter of personal choice, especially as they do little to nothing to stop transmission of the virus. That, right there, is enough for almost every Republican, and most moderate, voters.
Second, because we are seeing more and more data suggesting that the immuno-suppressing effect of the vaccine, likely cumulative with repeated dosage, creates ‘negative efficacy’. UK data now clearly shows that for omicron, being double jabbed makes you more likely to be hospitalised and die than having no jab at all.
This means the further the vulnerable go down the rabbit hole of repeated jabs, the more path dependent their immune systems become. Here is the every-excellent eugyppius on the subject:
Unboostered Brits Infected and Dying at Higher Rates than Unvaccinated (substack.com)
DeSantis reads this data and looks ahead. Trump doesn’t.
Agreed. Trump had his fun. Saved us all from Hillary: God bless him for that. Did his SCOTUS appointments: good important work. But is hopelessly self-absorbed and needy and too disorganized to lead. It’s sunset time in Trumpistan, I fear.
First time I concentrated on anything US politics was that election. I was always Dem if anything, but old Hillary just hit the wrong note from the get go. Intuition kicked in and I started following it.
This is another article promoting a Trump-DiSantis feud. Starting to get boring. No Pulitzer here.
I know, what is this, a Democrat party political piece?
“Trump’s trademark sneakily-shrewd bluster – those unfortunate evangelical Republicans”
But then nothing to say about Democrats and the vax – except they all worship it as some miracle charm which will save them from some bogeyman.
I think most Americans know that Trump would probably win in 2024 but that De Santis, or anyone who is not Trump, would certainly turn a probable win into a probable win by huge and possibly historic margins.
The scenario now being batted about is that the elections in November 2022 will likely result in the Republican Party having complete control of the House of Representative; perhaps 250 seats out of 438. The thought is that the House could then elect Trump as the Speaker of the House because the Speaker does not have to be an elected member of Congress.
If Trump should be quite satisfied with this (it would place him in the presidency should the House and Senate the decide to impeach both Biden and Harris) then De Santis, who is infinitely better qualified and better suited the office than Trump, would have the opportunity to be elected president in 2024 and enjoy possibly historic margins in both the House and Senate.
Already there is the sense that neither the current Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, nor the Minority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, should have any leadership position in the Republican Party going forward.
I don’t think the Fauci Flu and vaccination status will have any relevance to all this.
MAGA, Speaker Trump, WWG1WGA
This is a stark example of the false dilemma. When I see a British writer opining on the USA, I take two grains of salt. The “vaccination” issue for those of a certain age, is more like Anglicanism on the sacrament of confession: “All may. None must. Most should.”
Nice comparison Liz.
And it is a good rule of thumb to disregard a foreign journalist’s take on your domestic politics. When I hear US commentators, even ones I’m sympathetic to, opine on British politics, they invariably get key elements of the story wrong.
Here’s hoping that by 2024 Covid vaccination should amount to a single booster every year along with (included in?) the flu jab for the vulnerable. In which case this will prove a non-issue then; and perhaps minds and policies can be focused on important matters such as the enormous debt mountains, sensible green deadlines, managing immigration pressures, etc. Sadly I’m not sanguine about us having seen the back of gender/racial politicking by then.
booster, jab? Waht is it with you vaccine maniacs? It is not some cuddly ‘jab’ or booster, but an injection of alien genetic material created in a lab and once in your cells hijacks their systems to produce alien spike proteins, which then burst out of them like aliens from the mid section of a person – AND highly toxic spike proteins with potentially big health ramifications, as VAERS shows, and as no studies show otherwise – them still being experimental – and also the producers free of all liability if they destroy your life….
Oh no! Why didn’t I listen to you – a wee alien has just burst out of my tummy!
I’m going to love him and squeeze him and call him ‘George’.
He may look harmless now – but watch the movie to see how it ends…..
Another completely false narrative, clickbait in the making. Being pro vax and not mandatory is not a conflict. No different than being pro choice and against abortion. And I don’t see any connection whatsoever in being pro vax while being against reducing civil liberties.
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