Mastodawn

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

Liz Upton is as skilled at hitting the PR lines that the British media like to hear as she is wholly useless at social media. Every sentence of hers in the Buzzfeed article is a greatest hits of the classics. A quick breakdown:
1. Blaming the "snowflakes". This bit is a dig at content warnings, which the most tedious people in the world go wild for, with an additional little dig at vegans. Bores love it.

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

2. "Dogpiling" is an absolute favourite word of theirs. They don't really know what it means. It doesn't matter. It's *expected* to use that the second even one person says "um, I disagree with you, British person."

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

3. imo this is the most masterful bit in the entire statement. She's killing two birds with one stone, addressing the fact that literally nobody can buy one in the middle of the whinge. And she's managed to be vague enough that it can land with several audiences: some bores will be like "yes, it's Putin's fault" while other bores will go "yes, it's Brexit's fault". Gives the bores space to bang their own drums (and quietly link the drama to Putin)

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

4. A conspiracy theory, naming websites that the British media class have probably heard of but have no idea what they do. A creepy, scary bogeyman. Bonus points for having tried to prime thinking about Putin in the paragraph above, just to add to the "manufactured" attack line.

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

5. Claiming to have been doxxed and received death threats is a mandatory element of the "evil abusive social media" line. Doesn't matter that she is literally famous for doing Raspberry Pi's comms. That's doxxing, apparently. Doesn't matter if none of it is true. It's what they want to hear and Liz is supplying it. Worth noting this is highly, highly irresponsible to lie like this and link critics to illegal and violent activities, but they all do that.

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

6. This bit is a greatest hits of cop apologia. It is basically a word salad, but it consistently lands among bootlickers, even if it makes zero sense.

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

7. More cop apologia (including finally elucidating one or two small good things this spy cop is supposed to have done), but then some more clever bits. She appeals to Britishness, with "American police are bad, not like our good British bobbies", then goes straight onto a bogeyman: culture wars. Culture wars are Bad. She knows this. That's why she used those specific words.

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

See point 2 here - "concern trolling" is another one of those phrases where they don't really know what it means, they just like to use it. And it's expected to use it.

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

See point 5. The death threats excuse. No evidence it hasn't. This time, with bonus irresponsibility. While she's careful not to say James made death threats, she's very content to literally include a named individual who made mild criticism of the brand right next to a statement about "death threats". This is, I think, deliberate, to punish the guy for daring to make mild criticism and talk to the media (her turf!). And also wildly, wildly irresponsible.

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

8. Obviously this is just entirely risible, but it's important to frame your critics as not just evil trolls, but also bigots. This is an absolute classic in the playbook. Misogyny, antisemitism, racism... these are usually the ones in play. Anti-policemanism is, well, it's new and fair play to Liz for inventing a new bigotry.

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

To us, Upton's interview is basically incoherent gibberish, but we, the Mob, are not the intended audience. She's appealing to a different class entirely: the polite face of the right-wing culture war. She's pitching to British journalists, saying their talking points to them, meeting them on their patch. This is deliberate, because it is basically what PR people are trained to do!

And ultimately, I suspect she's succeeded at that.

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

I think, in giving this interview, Upton will be adopted and embraced by the worst of the British Polite Sensibles. I give it a year before she starts on weird conspiracy theories about Jeremy Corbyn and gets a bit TERFy.

Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖Dec 10, 2022

@stavvers The ‘hurt feelings to full right wing package’ pipeline is remarkably short and all you need to join it is an overactive sense of entitlement.

Another Angry Woman Dec 10, 2022

@christineburns Has anyone done any scholarship on it yet, because it is definitely A Thing which has been seen over and over

mathew Dec 10, 2022

@stavvers @christineburns If anyone has suggested reading, I am seriously interested in the topic of white fragility and what causes so many people to suffer from it. There was a popular book about it in the US, but the author was a white woman and got some significant criticism from the Black community, so I’m wondering if there are better choices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fragility#Reception

White Fragility - Wikipedia

I think about the arguments in Corey Robin's Reactionary Mind frequently.

"Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to freedom but its extension. For in that extension he sees a loss of his own freedom." ...

"Behind the riot in the street or debate in Parliament is the maid talking back to her mistress, the worker disobeying her boss."

https://www.powells.com/book/reactionary-mind-conservatism-from-edmund-burke-to-donald-trump-9780190692001

The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump: Corey Robin: Trade Paperback: 9780190692001: Powell's Books