Originally Posted by
Scaldrew
But strangely, research is all garbage and should be abolished, by way of cutting all spending.
Garbage research has been around since Plato, and probably even before then. Newton supposedly believed he could find the alchemical solution to turn lead into gold. There's even an expression in natural sciences called "gigo", which means "garbage in, garbage out": if you base your experiments on bogus claims and evidence, you'll get bogus results. I hear people like Lawrence Krauss talk breathlessly about how 99% of journals and articles are useless garbage he never reads. Guess we should just axe all of it, fuck it.
In truth, this whole feminism, garbage research in the useless humanities, conversation is one that's only being had online. I have yet to encounter a second researcher who takes any of the sensational garbage seriously. Most people are really just interested in their own field, and hardly move into politics at all ever, though they obviously have their own opinions. The one I have encountered is one no one takes seriously; not students, not colleagues, no one. Cos this stuff sounds absolutely crazy to absolutely everyone. Nor have I ever had anyone tell me I was being "toxically masculine" or berate me for holding the door open. All of this is highly flammable on the internet only.
Cos that's exactly where dumb teenagers get these garbage takes: online. They browse tumblr and reddit and youtube and deviantart and wherever else and just gravitate towards dumb stuff. Oh, what's that? A bunch of people with no personalities are claiming they have some specialised identity that's based on a phony conception of their gender and how the world is against them? Here, let me join in. Because who didn't feel like they were in a "me vs. the world" struggle for life as a teenager? And now otherwise pretty harmless phases in maturation are being elongated into ways of life, thanks to the confirmation bias of the internet. And look at that, those dumb teenagers happen to be loud, as well. Good luck drowning them out with solemn stoicism that you know what's best when they're shouting at the top of their raspy lungs.
The internet is not a public space, it's an enormous collection of private spaces. Really, the dichotomy public/private no longer holds up thanks to the internet; that's how revolutionary an invention it really is. Public discourse is about the same it was in the 90s, possibly even the 80s and 70s, too. The only difference is that now everyone has some evidence for some claim. You can prove anything online, because you no longer have to prove anything. Because all evidence is now so amazingly open to tampering and manufacturing that it hardly even qualifies anymore. Make up anyone, make up anything. Who will really tell the difference? Who will really care? News media does it every day, and hardly anyone cares.
Because with the internet, the discourse has changed. These big spats you see, the feminism in physics and the women's march in DC and the whatever you want? Those only exist in the media anymore. In the day to day, they're not there at all. Cos everyone's checked out; no one's paying attention. Not specialists, or experts, or fans, or people in the know, and not your everyday people, your laymen, your shlubs. These feminist physics and these "postmodern neomarxist anticapitalist insert adjective here" only exist, and can only exist, online, and thereby in the media. And outside they have so little impact on anything they may not even exist at all.
Guess we should abolish the internet, too. Just abolish everything. Get rid of all of it. Not that anyone's listening to me; I'm talking on the internet.