thought daddy detected

Ryan Holiday's only good book has an insightful chapter about snark. Broadly speaking, if you can say something dismissive and pithy about someone or something you don't have to make a substantive argument against it. It's not a real debate tactic, it's a way to amass clout without earning it. Holiday goes on to elaborate on the sort of people who benefit the most from snark, singling out Nikki Finke. After all, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter were institutions with an elaborate, symbiotic relationship with the entertainment industry. But they were both nearly extinct because of a bitchy shut-in who mostly talked trash like a bitchy, drunk Walter Winchell. And since THR and Variety actually had to publish (on paper!) while Nikki could just launch whatever the fuck she wanted whenever she wanted, people followed Deadline first. After all, if she was wrong she could just delete and pretend it never happened.

Nikki Finke was done in in the end by the same shit she dished out. It only took a couple well-placed articles to paint her up as a bitter housebound shrew that no one had seen in public in a decade or more. It's the same problem and the same solution as Matt Drudge, Chaia Raichik, you name it - if you can snark your enemy then their voice is silenced.

Here's the thing, though. Haidt has research. He publishes it. He'll still be here when Tumblr and Twitter move on to some other off-handed hashtag pejorative. Because he's hardly alone in documenting that the technology available to kids is not a universal good. And yeah - you can say "thought daddy" and score cheap points without observing that the whole of your argument requires denigration of someone for their age and gender.