Media – Wis[s]e Words

Faces of Deathbook

Published on April 25, 20181 Comment

Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant interviewed an ex-Facebook moderator about how the moderation process worked and it was shocking:

De haat, dat is wat hem meteen raakt. ‘Ik schrok daarvan.’ De intense haat, tegen asielzoekers, Marokkaanse Nederlanders, zwarte mensen. Erik: ‘En alles in Nederland is kanker. Kankerjongen, kankerneger, kankerhoer.’ In Vlaanderen krijgen de ‘makakken’ de schuld, in Nederland de ‘Marokkanen’. Elk gebied heeft zo zijn eigen ‘overlast’: gewelddadige foto’s en video’s van bendes in Latijns-Amerika, porno en geweld tegen vrouwen in het Midden-Oosten. De Portugese en Griekse moderatoren hebben het relatief rustig. Zij kunnen nog weleens Netflix aanzetten. Nederlanders niet: Nederland is het land van de haat, zegt Erik.

First, it turns out the Netherlands is about the most racist, hateful European country on Facebook, with the most complaints per day, lots of it racially motivated. Most of this occurs below the radar, but we saw the tip of the iceberg last year, when Dutch politician and media personality Sylvana Simons who had become the target of racial hatred on Facebook, reported this to the public prosecutor and examples of this hatred were given in the resulting lawsuits. To hear that this is indeed a common occurrence for Dutch people of colour on Facebook is disappointing, but not unsurprising. There is a huge amount of resentment hiding behind the white Dutch liberal pretence.

But second, there’s also the way Facebook treats its moderators, who turn out to have no support whatsoever except from a dodgy “feelgoodmanager”. Barely trained people working for little more than minimum wage are supposed to review material that goes beyond “just” racist comments, but includes snuff videos, child porn and other traumatic material even experts are supposed to only see in moderation, not eight hours a day, five days a week. No wonder so many moderators either quit or self medicate with alcohol or drugs.

But of course moderation is only a cost to Facebook and their real interest is to get as many people as possible posting and who cares what they’re posting. As long as ad revenue keeps coming, Facebook don’t give a fuck.

“I don’t mind Julie Burchill being on Desert Island Discs, as long as I can choose the island”

Published on February 10, 20132 Comments

So last month Julie Burchill got to write a hate filled column about trans people in The Guardian; this morning she got to have a nice old chinwag with Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs. Seems wrong somewhat, doesn’t it? The BBC wouldn’t let a Nick Griffin on the programme, so why give somebody who is clearly bigoted against trans people a pass?

To be fair, Burchill isn’t that similar to Nick Griffin, a better comparison would be Christopher Hitchens: a self identified leftist who always was a bit of a bully and who made a sharp rightwing turn once being leftist fell out of fashion. Like him, she’s has always moved in media circles –“queen of the Groucho Club” and such nonsense– and I have the suspicion that this cuts her a lot of slack outsiders, like Griffin, don’t get. It’s annoying as fuck to see those smallminded fools get media attention because of who they know and took coke with twenty years ago when so many much more interesting people are ignored.

(title.)

After the shootings

Published on December 15, 2012Leave a comment

Man with guns enters schools, murders dozens, media goes into feeding frenzy and somewhere Charlie Brooker weeps:

It’s super crip!

Published on July 11, 2012Leave a comment

You know how sometimes you notice something interesting but can’t really talk about it because you don’t have the right words for it? From an Canadian course about disability in the media:

The second disability stereotype that will be explored is “disability as hero by hype”. This stereotype is more commonly referred to as “the super crip” pereception. When not pitied, persons with disabilities are sometimes seen as “heroes,” or in other words, outrageously admired for their “courage” and determination. This stems from the belief that life with a disability must necessarily be horrific and unsatisfying, and as such, we must admire persons with disabilities for being able to live “the way they do.” Much like portraying disability as a form of lesser self-worth (as is often the case with the “disability as pity” stereotype), placing persons with disabilities on a pedestal is another way to denote this social group as “other”. This particular stereotype is also linked to the idea that disability in one area is complimented with superior abilities in another area (for example, the misconception that people who are blind have superior hearing)

“Super crip” is a good term for an phenomenon that has long irritated me, the way in which certain disabled or chronically ill people are periodically held up by the media as heroes for “overcoming” their disabilities. It’s always some nice middle class boy who got paralysed in a car accident but doesn’t let that stop him from fullfilling his dream of going white water rafting in the Amazon or mountain biking off Everest or whatever, who always take pains to distinguish themselves from all those other disabled people by showing how little they let their disabilities dictate their lives.

To be fair, it’s not so much those people themselves, though they can be annoying, as the narrative in which they are placed, which is threefold. On the one hand, it’s all about how, if only you believe hard enough, you can overcome any adversity and still be what you want to be, as a moral example for all us ablebodied people struggling with our petty problems. On the other hand, these are also stories about assuaging our own fears about becoming disabled and worthless, by showing disability as just another obstacle to overcome, rather than something that shapes your day to day life. Finally, on the gripping hand, it others all those disabled or chronically ill people who can’t or won’t fit the super crip profile, who just live ordinary lifes of quiet desperation like the rest of us. If you’re not hang gliding off the Niagara Falls you’re just not trying.

The super crip than is the other side of the coin of the stereoype of disability as pity, the idea that if you’re disabled or chronically ill your life is basically worthless and you’re very brave if you haven’t killed yourself yet — “in your place i’d killed myself! — cheers. Sandra, who of course had been chronically ill in one way or another, hated that. She was very firm in insisting that she wasn’t a hero, she was just an ordinary person dealing with life just like everybody else, even if she had to be more aware of her limitations than a temporarily able person need be.

The super crib stereotype is a stick to cudgel both temporarily able and disabled people for not being good enough to be as wonderful as them, yet another tool to keep the status quo. Clearly if Oscar Pistorius can compete in the regular Olympics on prostathic legs, surely you in your wheelchair are able to make your way through everyday life without our help and we don’t need to worry about ways to make society as a whole more accessible, physically and mentally, for people with disabilities. Similarly, why are you, a perfectly healthy worrying about your trivial problems when heroes like Pistorius can make history? Surely there’s no need to do anything for you, when he can pull himself up by his bootstraps and he doesn’t even have feet!

(Nothing against Oscar Pistorius, who seems a perfectly decent chap and who I hope will do well in his races.)