Does The Wiki Medium Cause People To Be Fascists?, Or Does It Merely Give Them More Breeding Space? Options

[Jonny Cache]

Since a few of our Reviewers have concocted realistic-sounding stories about their expertise in different aspects and branches of psychology, I've been thinking for a while that this might be an interesting question for — as they say — further research.

Now I know that Somey in particular is sensitive about what he takes to be the unjustified hyperbole of the word fascist, but the way I use the term one could just as well substitute authoritarian personality or any of its cousins, if it were not for the waste of bytes incurred by doing so.

On that understanding, let us proceed to the question in question.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Sun 18th March 2007, 5:50pm

[Somey]

Well, given that you are only referring to authoritarian personalities, or even just tendencies (which is much more common), then you really do have somethin' there.

The way I see it, the further you get into a text-only mode of interaction, things like content and policy disputes seem more and more real to you. If you're the sort of person who has real-life leadership skills, or even if you think you do, then when you see all that chaos and anarchy reigning over some heavily-edited discussion page, there's this irresistable urge to just jump in and take charge! Why not, right? Be bold! After all, if something goes wrong, disappearing from the scene is easy - you just stop posting.

On a Wiki, though, you might think you've actually helped solve the problem, when all you did was confuse the issue even further and possibly piss more people off. I've seen it happen on Uncyclopedia, too, including one particularly egregious case not too long ago. But if it's clear to everyone that you didn't help solve the problem, or made the problem even worse, you might actually get psychologically messed up over it - you'll feel like you've failed, and you've let others down. If you already have a depressive personality, that sort of thing can really screw you up...

On the other hand, if you're recognized and/or rewarded for having stepped in and effectively taken charge, or you actually did help to resolve something, then you'll feel like some sort of invincible wise prophet-like figure, and you'll want to do it again, and again, and again, until finally you do fail miserably at it. But then there are people who simply refuse to admit that they've failed, or who totally blame others when it happens... those are the authoritarian personalities. They're attracted to Wikis because it lets them exercise that side of their personality without real-life consequences, and without having to worry about lack of charisma, physical unattractiveness, poor organizational skills, or any of the other multitudinous reasons why people avoid leadership roles in the real world.

I'm not really a psychologist, though... I just have an avatar that looks like one!

[gomi]

(cough) ... Godwin's Law ... (cough)

I'm not actually a Christian Deity, I just have an avatar that looks like one!

[Jonny Cache]

Well, given that you are only referring to authoritarian personalities, or even just tendencies (which is much more common), then you really do have somethin' there.

The way I see it, the further you get into a text-only mode of interaction, things like content and policy disputes seem more and more real to you. If you're the sort of person who has real-life leadership skills, or even if you think you do, then when you see all that chaos and anarchy reigning over some heavily-edited discussion page, there's this irresistable urge to just jump in and take charge! Why not, right? Be bold! After all, if something goes wrong, disappearing from the scene is easy — you just stop posting.

On a Wiki, though, you might think you've actually helped solve the problem, when all you did was confuse the issue even further and possibly piss more people off. I've seen it happen on Uncyclopedia, too, including one particularly egregious case not too long ago. But if it's clear to everyone that you didn't help solve the problem, or made the problem even worse, you might actually get psychologically messed up over it — you'll feel like you've failed, and you've let others down. If you already have a depressive personality, that sort of thing can really screw you up.

On the other hand, if you're recognized and/or rewarded for having stepped in and effectively taken charge, or you actually did help to resolve something, then you'll feel like some sort of invincible wise prophet-like figure, and you'll want to do it again, and again, and again, until finally you do fail miserably at it. But then there are people who simply refuse to admit that they've failed, or who totally blame others when it happens ... those are the authoritarian personalities. They're attracted to Wikis because it lets them exercise that side of their personality without real-life consequences, and without having to worry about lack of charisma, physical unattractiveness, poor organizational skills, or any of the other multitudinous reasons why people avoid leadership roles in the real world.

I'm not really a psychologist, though ... I just have an avatar that looks like one!

Wow ! You really hit the nazi, er, nail on the head. I can see that you've really been thinking about this, and you echo so many of the thoughts that have been echoing through the airier chambers of my own skull that I really have to compliment you, and thus myself, on the depth of our redounding-resounding insights into the phenomenon.

As a pragmatic semiotician, I find that the following observation rings especially true:

The way I see it, the further you get into a text-only mode of interaction, things like content and policy disputes seem more and more real to you.

More on this theme later on, as it will take some development, but I need to explain a couple of points about how I understand the relationship between authority complexes, + or –, fascism, thuggery, vandalism, and so on.

Maybe after Bones ...

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 14th March 2007, 11:38pm

[guy]

I'm not actually a Christian Diety

You mean you don't follow a Christian Diet?

[Somey]

You mean you don't follow a Christian Diet?

I swear by the Diet_of_Worms, myself!

[Jonny Cache]

A discussion of the terms fascism and fascist may be in order. The way I remember it, these words derive from the old Roman symbol of authority and "strength in unity" that was called a fasces. This is a bundle of sticks, sometimes with an axe bound in the middle, that forms a natural emblem of e pluribus unum and a visible reminder of the idea that "united we stand, divided we fall". I seem to remember that a fasces once embellished the reverse of the US dime, but there's a torch there now, so maybe it got edged out during World War 2 when there were some folks running around making semiotic hash out of the perfectly good symbols of more than one ancient culture. But I will have to check my rather dim memories on this score later on.

Here's a decent gloss of fasces that I found right off:

• Jona Lendering, "Fasces" at Livius.Org

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Sun 18th March 2007, 5:56pm

[Skyrocket]

Readers should be careful not to confuse fasces with faeces, another word that has a connection to Wikipedia. As in "Does the Wiki medium cause people to be faeces?"

[Jonny Cache]

Readers should be careful not to confuse fasces with faeces, another word that has a connection to Wikipedia. As in "Does the Wiki medium cause people to be faeces?"

Way beyond LOL —

That's Totally TIME !!! —

Tears In My Ears !!!

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Sun 18th March 2007, 4:18pm

[Cedric]

Readers should be careful not to confuse fasces with faeces, another word that has a connection to Wikipedia. As in "Does the Wiki medium cause people to be faeces?"

Skyrocket rulz!

[Jonny Cache]

Recycling an infernally recurrent topic.

Jonny

[blissyu2]

We here at Wikipedia Review have been called fascists a few times. Holocaust deniers, nazis, and fascists. Anything else? I'm not sure of what the scorecard is actually. Oh yes, stalkers, trolls, harassers, outers and libellers. That sounds about right. But if you ever e-mail Jimbo challenging him on any of it, he will deny that he ever said anything like that. Even though there is a recent post by him calling us trolls and stalkers, if we challenge him on it he will insist that he was really talking about somewhere else.

[Moulton]

The RfC to silence and oust me was started by User:Filll, who told me (on the phone) that he joined the Wikipedia Project on Intelligent Design to beat back the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) and the Discovery Institute (DI) because he considered to them to be extreme right wing organizations. Ironic, eh?

[Jonny Cache]

We here at Wikipedia Review have been called fascists a few times. Holocaust deniers, nazis, and fascists. Anything else? I'm not sure of what the scorecard is actually. Oh yes, stalkers, trolls, harassers, outers, and libellers. That sounds about right. But if you ever e-mail Jimbo challenging him on any of it, he will deny that he ever said anything like that. Even though there is a recent post by him calling us trolls and stalkers, if we challenge him on it he will insist that he was really talking about somewhere else.

One of the reasons why I needled this thread in the faust place was to draw a distinction between the more generic uncapitalized term fascist and the more specific capitalized terms Fascist (a la Mussolini) and Nazi (a la Hitler).

Now, just the other day I found myself muttering the expletive Nazi! — and not entirely sotto voce — in regard to the bizarrely over-zelaous persecutions of an unseen metermonger who tagged my car for having one tire on a barely visible paint stripe at the front of a parking space with no other parking space or other territorial violation in front of it, and I'm pretty sure that quite normal folks use the word in that analogical sense from time to time.

But nevermind that now …

At any rate, I believe that the term fascist, with all due allusion to its venerable etymology, is just the right word to describe the particular social phenomenon that continues to force itself on my attention.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Sat 26th January 2008, 3:00pm

[Moulton]

For yet another take on fascism, see this sendup, featuring Siouxie Sioux and the Insouciant Kangaroo.

[GlassBeadGame]

For yet another take on fascism, see this sendup, featuring Siouxie Sioux and the Insouciant Kangaroo.

As long as a psychological discussion of fascism is being undertaken I would take the old school view of Eric Fromm in Escape from Freedom. In many ways Fromm wears his Marxism on his sleeve in this work. As he saw it, a seriously undermined, threatened and often impoverished German lower middle class formed the base for Nazism. When I look around at WP and see a disproportionate level of participation of tech people it makes me wonder. Is the fascism of WP attractive to the post-bubble tech worker? Have they been psychologically impacted by lowered expectations, taking refuge in unpaid work as jobs disappear. Does the threatened collapse of the tech industries in the economically privileged English speaking world have something to do with their following the decorated corporal from the First World Web (WWI) boom as God-King?

[Moulton]

The German people were grievously humiliated in the aftermath of the First World War, and longed to reclaim their lost honor and dignity.

Whenever a tribe suffers a blow to its self-esteem, it takes a turn to the right. Author Barry O'Neill wrote about that in his seminal book, Honor, Symbols and War.

Wikipedia is a battleground of narcissistic wounding, both in terms of the controversial content of BLPs and in the political infighting leading up to RfC's and administrative smackdowns.

A move to the right yields an increase in the practice of shaming and blaming.

An increase in the practice of shaming and blaming pushes more people to the right.

It's a vicious circle that is notoriously hard to arrest or reverse.

This post has been edited by Moulton: Fri 2nd November 2007, 12:00am

[Amarkov]

I don't think that wikis inherently lead to fascism (or whatever you want to call it). The problem is, Wikipedia was set up to have almost no power structure. So even though there is now a significant power structure, people still deny it, thus allowing the people who have power to do whatever you want. It's hard to call attention to abuse of power if you're not allowed to claim that the power exists.

[Somey]

For yet another take on fascism, see this sendup, featuring Siouxie Sioux and the Insouciant Kangaroo.

Ironically, I just used the phrase "these motets" the other day to describe some of the tracks on Siouxsie and the Banshees' (yes, you left out the "s," but I forgive you) fourth album, Juju, which I've always considered to be a terribly misunderstood and underappreciated record.

Of course, nobody knew what I meant by the word "motets," but then again, they weren't really listening in the first place.

I seem to recall that LessHorrid VanU is a Banshees fan... Hey, did anyone see that movie, "Notes on a Scandal"? It seemed like they were trying to offend old-line Banshees fans (female ones, at least) by indirectly suggesting that the main character's aesthetic preferences from that era in popular culture might have led to an inadequate sense of moral self-restraint on her part. Pshaw, I say!

Of course, in the movie, Cate Blanchett is shown looking at the Banshees' third album, Kaleidoscope, which I personally wasn't quite as fond of.

Maybe I just didn't play it loud enough, though... So, what's all this about "fascism," then?

[Kato]

Ironically, I just used the phrase "these motets" the other day to describe some of the tracks on Siouxsie and the Banshees' (yes, you left out the "s," but I forgive you) fourth album, Juju, which I've always considered to be a terribly misunderstood and underappreciated record.

"You dirty facker."

"Wot a dirty fackin' rotta."