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[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Blood on the virtual street at Clubhouse

Events this weekend suggest the honeymoon phase may already be over. There was blood on the virtual streets of Clubhouse last Friday, as a room created to discuss ‘wokeism’ experienced its own ‘woke coup’. Aficionados of arcane internet drama can listen to a recording of the whole thing here; the struggle session starts around the 2-hour mark and gets madder from there.

Around 2:45 the new moderators spotted Intellectual Dark Web luminary Bret Weinstein in the audience, called him onto the stage and proceeded to lay into him. “Are you anti-racist? Are you transphobic? Are you anti-black? Give us the answers now”.

The section that follows is an object lesson in the naïveté of that strand of optimistic rationalism that continues to imagine that all we need do in order to foster social harmony is just talk to one another. Weinstein and his interrogators agree on next to no fundamental premises, and those questioning him are hostile to his viewpoint. There is no ‘constructive dialogue’ under those conditions, and the outcome is as brutal and futile as you’d expect: a kind of toxic anti-conversation.