Ana Kasparian, Vaush, and How We Read Arguments

The R word is a lot more upsetting than bitch.

i think also it’s about the context of the conversations. latinos specifically designate central and south americans in conversation because of the cultural differences. usually i’ll say “north american” if i that is what the conversation requires.

I would respect Vaush for deradicalizing me… except no, I deradicalized me. Screw that guy.

Someone quote retweeted Ana's tweet & said something like 'when the two worst people you know are fighting' and it completely encapsulated how I feel. Ana has no obligation to speak to Vaush (because no one has an obligation to speak to anyone) but that's just reinforced by the abelist/misogynistic slurs. And Ana has some terrible views. & they're both white or white-passing people just being nasty to marginalized folk in their own way. Vaush routinely bullies black creators & Ana can't stop herself from bullying trans people. Ben is certainly worse but I would equally want to steer clear of all three for similar reasons. And the kind of "debates" vaush hosts are not very productive in my opinion anyway. To hear him tell it, he's changing the world but in reality it's mostly useless: the opponents almost never agree or concede points because they both have completely diff views that do not change through the course of the debate & they both want to be right (and being wrong is seen as weak). Plus, anyone vaush interacts with becomes the target of massive online hate. Sorry I'm just fed up.

sorry about your pickle

Your argument won me over.

It's such a good point that people don't always interact in literal way; so much of what we do is communication through symbols that take the form of sentences. Tldr; sorry for the length. I don’t really agree with your Ana-Vaush argument for a few reasons: --You're completely right that in an interpersonal situation it would make sense for Ana not to engage with Vaush, but... this isn't interpersonal. They're both public figures who actively work to maintain a public persona, and the rules are different when you're a public persona. And I think that’s important to remember. Vaush I believe actually goes into this in one of his response videos to Ana, that this isn’t interpersonal, it's a matter of political differences, and that the left is a political movement and not a social club. We are different people in the different roles we occupy in life, the same reason that different jobs have different rules for behavior than in our personal lives. --Some examples just to illustrate what I mean: when a terrible political figure (Rush Limbough, for example) dies for their family it's a tragedy, but for the world as a whole it's good by preventing them from causing more harm. Some jobs even curtail personal behavior that would otherwise be ok; a boss hitting on an employee, for example. --For public figures debate is inherently a form of legitimization of the other partipant’s ideas. This is where all the talk of platforming responsibly comes in; if you’re going to legitimize someone by talking to them, you have to make sure to delegitimize their ideas in that debate sufficiently that it cancels out the original legitimization of talking to them. I think Ana does that by debating shapiro, but as a public figure Ana isn’t just ‘choosing not to talk to Vaush’ in the way you might not a rude person in real life, she’s delegitimizing him and his position. --Ana isn't framing the argument the way you are. She isn't framing it as 'yes Shapiro has said terrible things, but I think there's utility to the left in arguing with him’. She herself is framing it as civility politics in her tweet: that shapiro is better than vaush and that is why she won’t debate him I think this is why a lot of people continue to latch onto the civility politics argument, it’s how she’s framing it. Her motivation is the core of civility politics; it doesn’t matter how bad someone is politically, only that they’re not rude. As far as she’s expressed, it’s perfectly accurate to say she’s motivated by civility politics. --Though not core to my argument, I do think it’s worth pointing out that Vaush attempted to ask Ana about her views privately, and only once he received no response there went on to address it publicly. Whatever interpersonal dynamic they had was gone when he commented politically on her. --I think there’s a mismatch of slur intensity going on: personally I don’t find either the B or R words particularly strong, and Vaush often simply shrugs off when people insult him, so there’s an extent to which Vaush doesn’t see it as a big deal where as Ana does. This isn’t an endorsement of either side, I just think it may be a mismatch.

This was a really good video. It's up to you of course, but I honestly think you should consider releasing it publicly. It seems very relevant to the work you do and I think its something worth expressing to your entire audience. Idk, ultimately its just very interesting to me

If I had read "Ana Kasparian, Vaush" and it hadn't been a Large Joel video, I most likely would not have watched it. Good job.

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