Thread by @interfluidity

the powerful have always had to self-censor. it’s a prerequisite of wielding power nondestructively. if you’re Fed chair, you don’t get to say what you think candidly in any context it might leak. presidents must be careful not to insult a wide range of delicate sensibilities. 1/

much of “cancel culture” comes from the fact power has become more divorced from formal public roles, so people who don’t understand that their institutional position demands self-censorship, who don’t think they’ve “signed up for this”, face the actual requirement of it. 2/

you thought you became a journalist to speak truth to power, to transgress, but once you’re at the NYT you wield power, and all the powerful, you must be careful about how you express your truths. you haven’t changed, but the social facts surrounding your words have. 3/

you’re a libertarian VC, free speech is why you got into the internet, you eschew formal power and believe in voluntaristic everything. but facts on the ground mean you wield extraordinary economic and cultural power. your speech is now scrutinized like a president’s. 4/

i hate all this stuff. my own ethos, my “identity” cherishes the transgressive, detests constraint, seeks to escape contexts where diplomatic circumspection is required. 5/

but as @pmarca once told us, tech gives us superpowers. by magnifying the reach of our voices, and by dissolving the barriers between contexts and therefore cultures, we have all become a little more like presidents, a little less like private citizens. 6/

it is much harder (and more precious) to find places where we can be selves with rough edges, unsmoothed by the vacuous conformity of a committee of the all. the more reach or wealth we gain, the less our deviations will be tolerated. 7/

it is one of god’s little ironies that this condition was given to us by a subculture that itself was explicitly transgressive. technolibertarianism created the conditions of its own undoing. 8/

i am sad, not glad, about this. i’d like a way out. but that’s a question more about power than about speech. if you value personal freedom above all, then powerlessness is a superpower. 9/

we need a world in which one can be both powerless and economically secure if we want our freedom back. /fin

“*like* all the powerful…” grrr.