{"id":53979,"date":"2024-10-07T01:00:52","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T05:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=53979"},"modified":"2024-10-06T08:45:29","modified_gmt":"2024-10-06T12:45:29","slug":"qotd-social-media-mobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/10\/07\/qotd-social-media-mobs\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Social media mobs"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>If you&#8217;d prefer reasoned debate, it will start with a collective realization that mobs can&#8217;t do much except make noise. They&#8217;re not actually very big, for starters \u2014 the number of people who replied to Rowling&#8217;s tweet wouldn&#8217;t fill most Texas college football stadiums, and reasonable people don&#8217;t choose their views by polling the crowd at the Aggies-Longhorns game.<\/p>\n<p>More important, most mobs aren&#8217;t committed to the effort beyond flicking a thumb. Institutions that ignore the mob are often astonished at how little difference all the outrage makes to their business \u2014 and I&#8217;d bet Rowling won&#8217;t see much evidence of this controversy in her royalty statements.<\/p>\n<p>The censorious power of Mrs. Grundys always depends on the cooperation of the governed, which is why their regime collapsed the moment the baby boomers shrugged off their finger-wagging. If Rowling provides an unmissable public demonstration that it is safe to ignore the current crop, we can hope others will follow her example, and the dictatorship of the proscriptariat will fall as quickly as it arose.<\/p>\n<p>Megan McArdle writing in the <em>Washington Post<\/em>, quoted by Ed Driscoll at <a href=\"https:\/\/pjmedia.com\/instapundit\/353436\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Instapundit<\/em><\/a>, 2020-01-02.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;d prefer reasoned debate, it will start with a collective realization that mobs can&#8217;t do much except make noise. They&#8217;re not actually very big, for starters \u2014 the number of people who replied to Rowling&#8217;s tweet wouldn&#8217;t fill most Texas college football stadiums, and reasonable people don&#8217;t choose their views by polling the crowd [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28,53,41],"tags":[254,1508,196,238,593,310],"class_list":["post-53979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-gender","tag-jkrowling","tag-lgbt","tag-offensensitivity","tag-socialmedia","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-e2D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53979"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91788,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53979\/revisions\/91788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}