Mostleastremarkablegate And The Nature Of Online Harassment

Works through whether a pundit-feud pile-on (Glenn of US-of-Exception writes a mean-but-funny takedown of Democratic pundit Jeff Tiedrich; Tiedrich's fans swarm Glenn's comments) counts as 'harassment,' honestly undercutting each easy answer in turn: Glenn started it; 'punching up' doesn't distinguish (it's all punching up); 'I just liked Glenn's post' is the same defense Tiedrich's fans use. Lands on the practical criterion he has emergently settled on for moderating ACX comments: the inflammatoriness-to-effort ratio - ban the maximally-triggering, minimal-content, low-effort comments, because length itself signals skin in the game and turns a 'psychological ritual' of neutralizing anger into an actual discussion. Closes on a clash-of-subcultures point: insults that follow your own subculture's format read as witty, other subcultures' read as gross harassment, so the solution is to maintain many different gardens and stay in the ones that work for you.

Quality 72 · Strong. Strong band (upper). Honest and self-undercutting, and it yields a genuinely useful, portable principle (the inflammatoriness-to-effort ratio for moderation) plus a sharp clash-of-subcultures observation. Held in Strong because it is occasioned by a minor topical kerfuffle and the gardens point recycles his earlier 'Archipelago' theme. A=72.

Claude’s paradigm shift 48 · Moderate. Moderate. The inflammatoriness-to-effort framing is a fresh, useful moderation principle; the rest applies his prior gardens/discourse themes. B=48.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. An honest, self-undercutting analysis of an online pile-on that yields a portable moderation principle (the inflammatoriness-to-effort ratio) plus a clash-of-subcultures observation. Conceptual influence within discourse, occasioned by a minor kerfuffle, no material change — low RWI.

Humor 1/5 · Lizardman’s Constant. Serious essay on online-harassment norms (the Tiedrich/Glenn saga, the inflammatoriness-to-effort ratio, the subculture clash); deliberate wit (the 'Cheeto-colored chucklefuck' Napoleonic-newspaper bit, 'have a fabulous day' as an out-group flag) but humor incidental to the analysis → 1.