Anil DashOne thing I think about sometimes is the time a decade or so ago when the editor of the MIT Tech Review scolded me for being critical of Milo Yiannopolis because Milo “went to a good school” (some British shit that probably means a lot to them but I can’t even remember what it was) and therefore couldn’t actually be awful. That was one of those turning points where I realized I would never actually get elevated to a certain level of culture or visibility, and I was quite content with that.
(It was Jason Pontin, who of course inevitably rode his journalistic failures into becoming a VC, following the path paved by fellow shitbird white supremacist apologist Jason Calacanis.)
Anyway, one thing I can tell you really definitively is that these guys are very, very afraid of anyone who is not at all afraid of them.
This came up in an unrelated search but man these shitbirds really count on people not keeping receipts.
Steve Silberman@anildash Before anyone knew who Milo was, he sent me a friend request on Facebook, which I accepted because Jason was a mutual friend. I unfollowed him almost immediately because he was posting hyper-racist erotica.
Pax Ahimsa Gethen"But he can't be racist, he married a black guy!" 🙄
Tim Panton@anildash The whole 'good school' thing has now been comprehensively (:-)) trashed by the damage the Eton boys have done to the UK. (also Milo went to the 3rd best fee paying school in a small city - so your man was wrong on all counts !)
Matþew Bowles@steely_glint @anildash not even fee paying, relatively bog standard Grammar, roughly on a par with where I went which impresses no one
Plus it's been proven repeatedly English fee charging schools are merely good at getting someone into a good uni, where they normally massively underperform
(Vehemently agreeing with you in case it comes across wrong)
Dropped out of one uni, expelled from another, not a good advert
Scott Perry@anildash The cowardice of people with something to lose
Paul Campbell@anildash I love how you so often articulate in words what I only really have vague senses of.
@paulca it is the curse of having been around long enough to see the patterns, I think.
Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉@anildash oops saw this toot too late. I furiously googling who it could be, thanks for the heads up. Good to keep a mental list of these people.
Rui Carmo@Migueldeicaza @anildash those folk are the reefs mainstream flows around, eventually. Elitism never helped anybody except the humble…
Pxtl
clinton@Migueldeicaza @anildash Right? There's a popular browser plugin "Reddit Enhancement Suite" that let you add private commentary to Reddit usernames so you could be reminded of what terrible thing somebody did/said, and I was tempted to write a similar FF extension for the birdsite. Then the Muskening happened and I moved over here and found it's built right in!
Chanders@anildash man I remember all those clowns.
whereandy@anildash is there a difference between white supremacist and white supremacist apologist
Ernie Smith@anildash I remember Milo from the pre-Breitbart days and I never could understand what his deal was. Then he got hired there and it all made sense
RI DaSēr K@anildash ..........I. Wow. Okay.
Like I know there are people who think like this, and I know they run the world, but. Wooooooooooow.
@so_treu I got receipts like CVS.
Matt Wilcox@anildash "He went to a good XYZ" is always a red flag about the values and critical thinking capability of whoever is talking.
@mattwilcox I mean, the guy edited a magazine published by a “prestige” university; he *has* to buy into that narrative.
John Ryan 👨🏻💻☸️🐾 🐘@mattwilcox @anildash James Carse in "Finite and Infinite Games" wrote about the nature of "titles." These are tokens one holds from "winning" a finite game.
When someone says to me, "...came from a good school..." I try to remind myself that's someone attempting to cash in a token: attempting to exchange privileged circumstances for a belief that they themselves are "better" than others.
Their fear of those who aren't playing that game is evidence that deep down, they know.
@mattwilcox @anildash It's a kind of evil because it *is* a finger on the scale. Those not having to fight all those *active* obstacles get a windfall of compounding "success."
The "comes from a good school" is just one such interest payment.
Ed Pimento@anildash Maybe, but some world beating youngster is gonna come along and say “Dash is the guy, I wouldn’t be a thing without his example.” Like Frankie Beverly is to r&b singers.
@edpimento that’s really kind 🙏🏾💜
Arclight@anildash I met classmates of Ross Douthat that were smart and sane enough to not subscribe to his BS but would defend him because they were (parse this carefully) classmates.
@Garwboy can relate similar anecdotes about the Guardian staff and Johann Hari (well-heeled plagiarist and mental health denialist).
"classmates" indeed. :/
David Emmett
John Panzer
Glyph@arclight @anildash @Garwboy oof. thank you for this, I'd seen some recent interviews with Hari and thought his new book sounded interesting, and probably would have bought it today if not for this heads up. I will make a note to do a quick check of the wikipedia page for any authors before supporting them in the future…
Simon Frankau@arclight @anildash @Garwboy Weird thing, university allegiance. Hari was the editor of the student newspaper, which made it abundantly clear from his editorials that he was a grifting shit. I've got to assume it's those who didn't overlap with him think he's great because he did a high-profile role awfully.
Michael@anildash ok, I know that wherever he went doesn't justify his behaviour at all, but I was curious.
The educational establishments on his Wikipedia page are not particularly notable and don't mean very much to this Brit. Maybe he exaggerated their reputation for his own benefit.
However, my opinion of the ones that booted him out has been raised slightly!
John Minnihan@anildash I don’t recall details (yay me) but I experienced a similar ‘wut’ moment w/ that same person several yrs ago
Brian Hawthorne@anildash
“He went to a good school.”
“He comes from a good family.”
These and many other similar approbations really come down to the same racist and classist dog whistles. They are socially acceptable ways to say:
“This person is male, white, Anglo, Christian, from the wealthy social classes, and therefore beyond reproach. How dare you, you uppity….”
Let’s make this socially unacceptable. If you hear these phrases, push back with, “Isn’t that what they usually say about serial killers?”
Matthew Nadler@anildash @bhawthorne I’d be more impressed by someone if they went to a “bad” school.
Andy Bell@anildash it’s not like we can link all the terrible people to one private school in the UK or anything
weo3dev
Eva Chanda@anildash
"Good school" = posh, expensive school = Milo is a privileged, well-connected "old boy"
"Good school" = posh, expensive school = Milo is a privileged, well-connected "old boy"
@erchanda I figured it out, but it was striking how brazen they are about it!
aardvark@anildash I’ve been scolded by someone at MIT TR. I was surprised by the clearly political policy posture of the person. I looked harder at this thing I’d been reading. I unsub’d. It’s readers digest without the honesty to admit they’re a press release republisher.
Reay Jespersen@anildash Everyone knows you can’t be a bad person if you went to a good school.
That’s just good science.
That’s just good science.
@anildash holy shit- this is insane
Eduardo Fonseca 🇧🇷 🇺🇸@anildash that is crazy.
JP@anildash the first thing i ever saw by him was this piece and golly, even deeper than the white supremacy and other awfulness, this is really who he is on a fundamental level, and there are plenty of people out there who are playing the same game - that MIT tech review guy, probably - even if they don't hold the exact same horrid views. https://www.businessinsider.com/why-i-rank-my-friends-2014-4
Paul Shread@anildash every shitty SCOTUS justice went to "good" schools - we need to start tearing down the Ivy myth
Lukas Neville@anildash "yes, he's a fascist, but you have to understand, he has excellent table manners"
Philip Mallegol-Hansen@lukasneville @anildash “And frankly, folks with good manners are hard to find these days”
Jeff Craig@lukasneville @anildash "He knows all the Right people."
hammancheez@anildash it means a lot to 'them that went to those schools' because believe me regular british folk hate the Eton crowd as much if not moreso
Cassandrich@anildash Anyone who says something of the form "went to a good school", "from a good family", etc. is pretty much irreparably awful.
Michael C. Bazarewsky@anildash is that the same editor that decided that the old service that used to help with tracking follower info (it was so long ago I'm hazy on all the details now, but I was a user and you were a creator) was "useless" and that's why it went away, even when I called him out that clearly since I used it, it wasn't useless?
what a utter tool that guy was. it colored my view of that magazine to this day and by association, all of MIT.
@anildash isn’t like … every single book about “good schools” in Britain about how they’re mind-shatteringly disgusting hazing and abuse factories and they exclusively turn out horribly broken repressed people who are only able to pretend a sort of unconvincing performance of normalcy
Richard Earney@anildash Boris Johnson went to a good school ans he’s a lying asshat, so it means nothing!
Charlotte@anildash Woah, that's so messed up. Also, anyone with a functioning moral compass should realise pretty quickly that in the UK, most of the worst people (with the biggest potential to do harm) come from the "best schools". It's a very broken system.