This is interesting. I never thought of the indie web as entailing so much. Webmentions? Microformats? I donât mess with any of that shit but I definitely consider myself a member of the indie web.
Maybe the difference is in style: âIndieWebâ (dot org, a specific website with a specific list of cool bells and whistles you can add to your page) vs. just âindie webâ (what it says on the tin: the independent web).
Indie web is when you do a thing on the internet thatâs independent of the centralized web. Just like indie music, itâs a spectrum, not a hard category. mastodon.social is kind of indie, hosting your own Mastodon instance is a little more aggressively indie, rolling your own ActivityPub implementation is probably even more so⌠but all of these people have equal claim to the label âindie webâ; the purpose is to offer up alternatives to Facebook and TikTok, not to dictate which alternatives are better.
Exactly, but this is precisely why I cordially dislike names like âindie webâ, âsmall webâ, âsmol webâ, âold webâ, and even âweb revivalâ. By doing so, we are othering ourselves while normalizing a commercial/corporate web that we should instead be calling out as a parasitic aberration whose owners think they have the right to turn the WWW into cable TV with a heavily-moderated comments section.
As far as Iâm concerned, what weâre doing is just plain old World Wide Web and always has been. We never went away, weâre just not getting the spotlight we had gotten in the late 1990s. The likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Jay Graber, Ev Williams, and the assholes behind Substack are gentrifying the internet at everybody elseâs expense.
Iâve been this guy before, back before I got married.
This is what childhood emotional neglect and normative male alexithymia looks like. This guy was never taught, permitted, or encouraged to feel or express any emotions other than anger. So, his only emotional tool is a hammer and now every problem looks like a nail to him.
It bears mentioning that my wife didnât fix me. I had to get my shit together, and it wasnât easy, but I knew I had to get my shit together if I didnât want to ruin the good thing I had gotten going with my wife.
But this this is basically how we raise boys in the US. Generations of systemic childhood emotional neglect, and then we call the result âtoxic masculinityâ.
This isnât your coworkerâs fault, but it is his problem, and he has a responsibility to stop making it everybody elseâs problem.
Hoo boy, yeah Iâve seen it too. And as a woman, I think the reason your female coworkers are enabling it is because theyâve been taught to âfixâ all of the emotional issues in the area, especially when it comes to this behavior. Like, toxic masculinity doesnât really work in any setting, but in âtraditionalâ ones, it at least has a built-in valve to help maintain it, and the valve for this one is the caring, doting woman who takes responsibility for everyoneâs emotions and smooths everything over.
I was raised to be that way myself, and it took a lot of work to stop doing that, because as you said, it doesnât help, and it was causing me a lot of pain. Sorry youâre having to deal with it here, it sounds very frustrating.
Thanks for sharing - and I really enjoyed this format.
I also hope your pessimistic prediction doesnât come true, but government ID to have a website is exactly the kind of thing I first thought of myself. Well, actually, a kind of registration / persistent identity across services to prevent all the abuse that happens online.. but then I immediately foresaw how it could be used for evil by governments, stalkers, and identity thieves. It would actually make the web less safe, not to mention deny people the ability to express themselves using the identities they feel most comfortable with.
Iâll also be taking part in the Indie Web Carnival for the first time. At first I wasnât sure what I would contribute to the discussion, but Iâve now been up since 3am, head overflowing with ideas. Itâs a completely different direction to what you shared - more what I wish the web could be, with some thoughts as to how the indie web could get us there - but Iâve already written half a blog post (almost 1500 words alreadyđ ). Iâm commenting here to remind myself to read your article again before posting to tie some of these threads together.
I have definitely tried to appease people who are dysregulated because it scares me and I want the behavior to stop. If no superior is going to do anything to get him to stop freaking these ladies out, it seems like theyâre trying to mitigate the damage in the way theyâve been conditioned. Iâve stopped appeasing people like that but I understand the impulse
My guess is, only by virtue of being a woman and not actually having been in this situation, they are doing what they can to avoid becoming direct targets of his anger. Yes, they are afraid. Generally, we feel as though we have to be actively nice rather than neutral, because neutral for a woman is âbitchyâ in the eyes of many malformed men. And being a bitch to a man (and an overtly angry one, at that) is dangerous.
Thereâs unfortunately not a lot that you can directly do as a single person. You could make it known to your colleagues that youâre there to support any complaints made about this guy, but this is basically all societyâs doing. Women will ârewardâ bad behaviour because itâs safest for them to do so, and angry men canât get the help they need because toxic masculinity says that help is for losers.
I havenât been super active on my blog lately because of IRL stuff, but I did take the time today to make a photo post featuring photos of the fog that came in this morning:
Why are we making assumptions about what this guy was/wasnât taught?
I could not care less about why men (or individuals of any gender!) like this engage in this behaviour. They are adults so itâs their responsibility to handle any problems that prevent them from behaving like mature, well-adjusted adults. Iâm not their parent, baby sitter or therapist. Iâm sure men are just as capable of using their brains to comprehend basic manners.
If someone behaves like this, I just want to have nothing to do with them.
I am not starbreaker, but I donât think starbreaker intended his explanation of how my guy got that way as an excuse or rationale.
Going further: I think itâs bad that my colleagues enable the difficult personality, and if I took zero interest in how they were taught that enabling behavior, then I may react to their actions with disproportionate rage instead of recognizing that their crimes are not nearly on the same level.
something i would like to note is that you characterise your female colleagues as âenablingâ but donât seem to think of yourself or your other colleagues similarly, even though nobody has at any point (apparently?) ever spoken up and told him his behavior is unacceptable. everybody in the office is collectively enabling his behavior. when you treat this behavior as normal, socially acceptable, unobjectionable, and a matter that can be easily dismissed or ignored, you are also enabling it. thatâs what enabling is. you, yourself, âlet him vent.â
i think you should perhaps examine why you think women making âunsolicited small talkâ is âenablingâ and why men âgreet[ing] him with neutral banterâ isnât; why do you feel that your own politeness and avoidance in favor of not rocking the boat is neutral, but these women being polite and avoidant in favor of not rocking the boat is them doing âcrimesâ ?
you also present these two female colleagues as uniquely victimized by this man - âthe sum of all his outbursts is more than enough leverage to get him disciplined if they want to go that route.â âProtect others from being victimized by his anticsâ âitâs not my job to call out their enabling behavior, nor can I speak on their behalf and confront Wild Child directly.â
what about speaking on your own behalf and protecting yourself from being victimized?
Hmm, thatâs a fair critique and I appreciate the perspective switch, although Iâm not sure your quotes are taken in their proper context. You are reading my remarks as though they were addressed to the colleagues, when in fact it is a journal of all the things I decided not to say to my colleagues after reflecting on the situation.
Specifically: My colleagues are not just enabling his behavior by being polite and avoidant; they are encouraging it by writing him sappy letters. My initial reaction upon seeing this behavior was anger (why are you encouraging him?), but then I thought about it and realized that that was an uncharitable response; they are simply applying a defense mechanism that works for them, and itâs not my place to judge.
Indeed, my approach is passive and enabling in its own way, although Iâm not sure I agree with you that the degree of enablement is 100% equal. But making this a debate about âwho enabled moreâ is just blaming the victim more creatively. As you say, we need to all fend for ourselves.
Iâve found an approach that works for me, and my colleagues have found an approach that works for them.
toxic masculinity