An Unfortunate Event


studiodekadent

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As some may know, I was once an enthusiastic participant in and advocate of TVTropes.org as a site that contained entertaining and insightful analysis of media.

I have recently been forced to reverse my former endorsement of the website.

The full context of these circumstances are as follows.

For those familiar with TVTropes, they happen to have a "Useful Notes" section which contains guides on matters relating to science, social science, philosophy and history (amongst other things) which aim to provide writers of fiction with information on a specific subject, in order to assist writers in being accurate.

As such, I proposed a Useful Notes section on Objectivism.

I wrote a draft of the section, complete with references to Objectivist scholarship (for instance, the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies) to back up the section's accuracy. A few other members of the website who were either Objectivists or former Objectivists also gave an overview and agreed with the summary.

The section was posted on the website and for quite a while, the section did very well. For the most part, defamation and vandalism were avoided. Questions and criticism occurred on the Discussion Page and proceeded in a polite and orderly fashion. The vast majority of critique was polite and intelligent and discussions never descended into flame wars. Several other members of the site complimented the page on its fair, neutral introduction to the philosophy.

And then, the moderation staff banned me from editing that specific page. Just that specific page.

Now, I have made several contributions to this website, from informational pages about specific bands, new tropes, and the like. I also wrote pretty much the whole Objectivism page. I know that TVTropes is a Wiki, and thus I cannot claim some sort of property right over the text (nor am I intending to). What I am claiming is that in the interests of simple factual accuracy...

1) Someone with actual knowledge of Objectivism should be able to write the page.

2) The page should, like every other useful notes page on the wiki, be devoted to explaining the subject at hand, in an absolutely impartial fashion.

3) Debates about Ayn Rand's own personality quirks should be treated as absolutely irrelevant to whether or not Objectivism is correct or incorrect.

I do not believe that my three above requests are even remotely unreasonable.

Unfortunately, some members of the wiki apparently disagree.

According to some other members (and I should add that many other members actually would not agree with this), the main page is insufficiently unbiased because it (to quote another member) "It doesn't, like most of the rest of the wiki, take every opportunity to get a potshot in at Ayn Rand."

I have always edited with a policy that debates about Ayn Rand should be kept on the Ayn Rand page, whereas discussions of her ideas are to be kept on the Objectivism page. This is absolutely fair; it separates the philosophy from the philosopher. Unfortunately, some people have a tendency to edit the Ayn Rand page in such a way as to basically use her personality flaws as an attack on the ideas. Additionally, said people also seem to think that a long and thorough discussion of Ayn Rand's own personality problems needs to be placed on the Objectivism page (even when there already is an Ayn Rand page, which would make further discussion of her personality flaws redundant).

Irrespective of all of this, my problem is fundamentally with a double standard. Specifically, not a single philosopher or philosophy gets the same amount of Ad Hominem-filled invective thrown at them/it as much as Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

Before I was Edit Banned, I was absolutely proud of that page, and especially its discussion page. Again, discussions were usually polite. There were critical comments, but these were kept free from personal attack.

Now, I have realized that in spite of the support of many tropers who believed the article was fair, factual and levelheaded, some people simply find threat in a factual presentation of what Objectivism argues.

As member "Oonerspism" stated, "I fail to see how the page isn't neutral." I share Oonerspism's sentiment. Other members such as ucal, and several others (See the following for evidence: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/remarks.php?trope=UsefulNotes.Objectivism ) have shared this sentiment.

But apparently, even if many (probably most) members consider it neutral, some do not.

Why would someone find a threat merely in a factual explanation of Objectivism's basic propositions?

My theory is as follows; Ayn Rand is important to several political narratives. She serves role of either heroine of villainess depending on the narrative, but the point is that Objectivism as a system of ideas is considered important. As such, those that disagree with Objectivism have a vested interest in preserving the stereotypical and misinformed popular conception of Objectivism (specifically, that Objectivism supports fraud and rape and loves any large corporation and supports social darwinism and is anti-gay and whilst atheistic is essentially a religion).

Since this popular conception is blatantly false (although yes, there is some truth to the allegation of anti-gay and being a religion, when dealing with a subsection of nominal Objectivists), a presentation of what Objectivism actually argues automatically threatens this narrative.

It gets worse, because Objectivism's actual arguments often make quite a bit of sense (in whole or part) to many people. The idea that Objectivism might say even one or two things that are sensible and hence completely opposite to the Objectivist stereotype threatens the traditional narrative even moreso.

As such, a neutral presentation of Objectivism is automatically seen as "positively biased" simply because it doesn't fit the popular stereotype. Basically, some people simply cannot stand the idea that they may be misinformed about Objectivism.

That is the charitable option. A less charitable option is that some people completely know they are deliberately distorting the philosophy and/or being logically fallacious in their attempts to use Ayn Rand's regrettable personality deficiencies to attack Objectivism. But they simply don't care because they know that Objectivism is a legitimate enemy and they will use any means necessary to take it down.

I would hope that the uncharitable option is a very rare phenomenon.

Ultimately, the responsibility for me being edit-banned lies with the moderators. I neither know nor care whether the decision to edit-ban me was made under the auspices of my charitable or uncharitable explanations, or pressure from other members, or any other possible cause, or simply an innocent mistake.

This leaves me with what I am going to do about it.

In "The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand," Dr. David Kelley described the unfortunate fact that some Objectivists "seem to take perverse pleasure in contemplating the awfulness of their enemies" and that some Objectivists "have acquired a zest for moral condemnation." Kelley argues that a proper Objectivist with a benevolent sense of life would find having to issue a moral condemnation to be an "occasion for sadness and disappointment."

I agree with Kelley.

Before I was Edit Banned, TVTropes provided me with not only intelligent debate and discussion on the discussion page for Objectivism, but plenty of witty and humorous analysis of popular fiction. It also helped me improve my analytical skills with respect to fiction. The site, in short, gave me plenty of value. It was a time sink, but I got a lot of fun out of it. I enjoyed coming up with ways to play with various tropes and I contributed several tropes of my own.

But the sheer refusal of (what I believe to be) a small minority of members of the site to deal with the ideas of Objectivism in a manner that doesn't reduce down to debating about Ayn Rand's personality, and the resultant Edit Ban on me for the Objectivism page, has robbed me of my enjoyment.

I am left in the position of having a site which I have invested some time and effort into has decided it considers me the equivalent of a wiki vandalist simply for trying to keep discussion of Objectivism both on-topic (i.e. dealing with the philosophy rather than the philosopher) and civil (i.e. avoiding personal attacks and the use of ad hominem as a substitute for reasoning). And the intelligent criticism raised by some members of the site doesn't change the fact that I have been essentially gagged by the moderator even when I was exceedingly polite and other members were impressed with my neutrality.

Thus, I am feeling the sadness and disappointment Kelley spoke of; the natural result of having a potential value go sour.

I will not condemn the majority of members of the website. Nor will I condemn the nature of a wiki and nor will I condemn the purpose and stated aim of TVTropes. I will, however, condemn the moderators and whoever (if anyone) pressured them into edit banning me from a page with only two flaws; a devotion to accuracy and to civility rather than ad hominem attacks and distortion of ideas.

As a result, I shall be deleting my contributor's page as well as ceasing my involvement with TVTropes.

This is a sad moment for me. But I won't give further existential aid to a website who's moderators clearly have little problem with systemic defamation of unpopular philosophers or philosophies.

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Andrew,

My advice is to leave the article up.

It is one of the better ones I have read on a neutral place.

That's a message-value to be weighed against protesting the power plays of moderators.

But it's your decision.

(I would even try to get a backlink from it to a site I own if I were you. When the AS movie hits, you could get a ton of targeted traffic from that article.)

Michael

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Andrew,

My advice is to leave the article up.

It is one of the better ones I have read on a neutral place.

That's a message-value to be weighed against protesting the power plays of moderators.

But it's your decision.

(I would even try to get a backlink from it to a site I own if I were you. When the AS movie hits, you could get a ton of targeted traffic from that article.)

Michael

Michael,

The page will be left up on the site. I just won't go back there.

Assuming the haters don't swoop in and rape it to pieces (and there are some other Objectivists and Objectivist-sympathetics there), the summary's vitals should stay intact. Hopefully, at least.

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Andrew,

My advice is to leave the article up.

It is one of the better ones I have read on a neutral place.

That's a message-value to be weighed against protesting the power plays of moderators.

But it's your decision.

(I would even try to get a backlink from it to a site I own if I were you. When the AS movie hits, you could get a ton of targeted traffic from that article.)

Michael

Michael,

The page will be left up on the site. I just won't go back there.

Assuming the haters don't swoop in and rape it to pieces (and there are some other Objectivists and Objectivist-sympathetics there), the summary's vitals should stay intact. Hopefully, at least.

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Incredible.

Your Trope trauma reminds me of the Mohammad-was-a-pedophile "discussions" of modern Islam which we see in more than one place.

Michael is a foe of Bullying and Bigotry wherever he sees them, everyone is welcome here to fight his own good fight.

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