[ctvo]

> Dark humor about race or ideology can eventually shape the beliefs of impressionable young people, and innocuous memes can be co-opted into symbols of hatred, researchers say.

Immediately following this paragraph is a quote from a researcher:

> “If you’re a young man with no prospects hanging out on 4chan, you’re definitely on some Discords and probably some pretty dark Discords,” said Dale Beran, a lecturer at Morgan State University and the author of “It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office.”

[sbuttgereit]

"Dale Beran - Lecturer/ Animation Coordinator , Screenwriting and Animation"

Researcher, perhaps, but seems to not be what his credentials or college role is about.

https://www.morgan.edu/screenwriting-and-animation/faculty-a...

[jjeaff]

Whether it's valid or not, authoring a book on a particular subject usually qualifies someone as an expert on a subject. Especially if it is on an esoteric and modern subject like online socializing.

[latency-guy2]

I know of someone who published a book on Golang in 2010. The rating of that book is sitting in the 3s out of 5 stars last I checked 6 years ago. Is he an expert at Go? Not in my most humblest opinion, is the content of the book good? Also a no in my honest, must charitable view. How far did he get with showing people how to program with Go? About as far as you'd get in 2 hours on the golang docs even considering a very poorly skilled college student doing the exercises. There's maybe 170 pages in the book. I'm almost certain the book has not reached even 200 sales at the highest.

Is he really considered an expert to you, solely because of the publishing of a book? Here it is by the way: https://www.amazon.com/Go-Programming-John-P-Baugh/dp/145363...

I know that's not necessarily your view, but this is the standard we are working with

[rvba]

Some people write a book to be able to self promote.

I was on a meetup, where 4 scrum master "experts" were doing some presentation and they gave out their book. It was around 100 pages with very big font :) written by 4 people. So basically 4 bad essays of 25 page each.

But hey, they could then tell to HR that they (co)wrote a book on agile methodologies. Also they (co)hosted lectures for meetup attendees.

The more interesting part, is that this wasnt even the worst book about agile / scrum that I have read...

[rdtsc]

Someone I know did that too. Published a blog post then started adding “author” to their credentials. Spoke at a local 10 person meetup about some node.js framework at the time and promptly added “speaker” to the list.

[jjeaff]

As I said, I don't necessarily think that writing a book is a valid criteria, but people that do so are often used as expert sources in journalism or even court cases. It's not like you can get someone who has a phd in 4chan to interview.

[qikInNdOutReply]

Chat GPT write me a book on the following topic. Instant expert, just add hot water.

[TeeMassive]

It's been years now that AI can write books. Writing a book nowadays doesn't mean anything. "Doing your own research" is laughed at now, but this is actually used to be the job of journalists to do that. That doesn't mean not using experts to help understand complex subjects. But what journos like the NYT is fishing experts and using them as a "proof" is simply arguing from a conclusion.

[imgabe]

"Lecturer" is a non-tenure-track position that means you get paid a few thousand dollars to teach a class. This person doesn't even have a PhD.

[skissane]

> "Lecturer" is a non-tenure-track position that means you get paid a few thousand dollars to teach a class.

In the US (which this person is).

In most of the rest of the English-speaking world, the majority of full-time academics are "lecturers" (or even "senior lecturers"), expected to do both teaching and research, and a PhD is usually required (but exceptions have occasionally been made). An "adjunct/visiting/associate/guest lecturer" is a different thing, that's generally a part-time or even honorary position, and there are no expectations about research output.

Part of this is because Americans inflated the title of professor to the point of making almost every full-time/permanent academic one, whereas in the UK and Commonwealth professor was reserved for the most senior rung of academics, with associate professor for those part-way there. (For most fields–medicine has a lot more professors, but clinical professor is generally a giveaway they spend the majority of their time treating patients, and teaching and research is a side-gig.)

Although–I wonder if everyone in the US uses the terminology in the same way. It is not unheard of for some university out there to just do something weird which others don't. Not saying that's true in this person's case, but not impossible.

[imgabe]

> UK and Commonwealth professor was reserved for the most senior rung of academics, with associate professor for those part-way there.

This is the same in the US. Tenure-track starts with assistant professor. Associate professor is when you first get tenure. Finally after having tenure for 5-7 years you can become full professor.

[skissane]

> This is the same in the US. Tenure-track starts with assistant professor. Associate professor is when you first get tenure. Finally after having tenure for 5-7 years you can become full professor.

It is different in the US. In the US, someone who just finished their PhD and wants an academic career will look for an “assistant professor” entry level academic job. Whereas, in the UK/Commonwealth, the entry level academic job is a “lecturer”-which is equivalent to US “assistant professor”. In the UK system, the first promotion is not to “associate professor”, it is to “senior lecturer”. Then a senior lecturer looks to get promoted to “associate professor”-which is actually a more senior/exclusive title than US “associate professor”. So this is my point-the US calls junior academics “assistant/associate professor”, whereas traditionally in the UK/Commonwealth they aren’t a type of “professor”, they are a type of “lecturer”. An “associate professor” in the UK/Commonwealth is roughly equivalent to a full professor in the US, so a UK/Commonwealth full professorship is (in itself) more prestigious than a US one-a UK/Commonwealth full professor is more like a “distinguished professor” in the US

Furthermore, it’s not unheard of in UK/Commonwealth system for people to get stuck at the senior lecturer level and never get promoted to associate professor-a person who retires as a senior lecturer hasn’t reached the heights of academia, but they haven’t been a failure. By contrast, the US hands out senior academic titles much more easily, which makes the a failure to reach them look like much more of a career failure.

As always there are exceptions: a small number of UK/Commonwealth universities have been adopting US-style academic titles (such as “assistant professor”), and Canada has always been far more US-influenced than the rest of the Commonwealth

[imgabe]

The main distinction as far as I understand is tenure / not-tenure, everything else is just window dressing. Is Senior Lecturer when they're awarded tenure in the UK?

Generally it's failure to get tenure (or failure to get on the tenure track) that's considered a failed academic career. Many professors might stop at the associate level and not go on to full professor, but they don't care because they have tenure.

[RoyGBivCap]

>“It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office.”

CNN and reddit arguably did more than 4chan to get trump elected. They couldn't shut up about him and they have way more reach than 4chan.

[misssocrates]

The news media gave him $2 billion in free media coverage during his first campaign alone. Does 4chan come anywhere close to that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_2016_Uni...

[somedude895]

> innocuous memes can be co-opted into symbols of hatred, researchers say.

It's beside the point, but does anybody actually see social studies and the like as "science" anymore when people in them get bullied and silenced and have their careers destroyed if they think or say the wrong thing? When things that go against left-wing beliefs don't get published? When an overwhelming majority of them are on the same political spectrum? After the grievance studies affair? I see it more as a propaganda machinery and after all if you tortute the data long enough, it will confess. I basically just ignore their research whenever I see this sort of stuff.

[Llamamoe]

I feel like a lot of stuff fhsg "gods against left-wing beliefs" gets silenced primarily when it's a bad-faith argument in the first place, but yeah. I'd personally like more studies on e.g. factors associated with why some trans people on HRT get fatigue, and how to avoid it.

[Akronymus]

> I feel like a lot of stuff fhsg "gods against left-wing beliefs" gets silenced primarily when it's a bad-faith argument in the first place, but yeah.

"How much of the recent rise in transgenderism can be attributed to people being more accepting vs how much is peer pressure"

Such a study won't see the light of the day any time soon. Yet, I wouldn't classify it as bad faith, as kids/teens are VERY impressionable. (And then there's the whole detrans thing)

Would you classify it as bad faith?

[Llamamoe]

Y'know... nobody ever cares that trans kids suffer from lack of treatment as hard as cis kids from being given it(a way less common situation than the reverse), nobody cares that kids are abused left and right in much more common ways, nobody cares that most people transitioning are adults. What people care about is fuel to put validity of trans people and their agency to question.

It's not so much that discordant views get silenced, it's that everyone is aware that in the current climate, almost anything can - and WILL - be used to fuel discrimination. Such a study being approved alone would be taken as proof that "even the left finally admits transgenderism is hurting children" by a LOT of people. Even the way you titled the hypothetical study is de facto begging the question.

I mean yeah, these things should be studied. But it's not as though we have no science. E.g. detransition- we know it's uncommon, and mostly due to external circumstances, not regret. In light of this, is proposing to study specifically whether kids are getting pressured into transition(instead of "factors leading to transition"), in disregard of the fact that we already know most benefit from and don't regret it, "bad faith"? Yeah. Kinda.

The science very much so supports the rationale and safety of transition, but everyone and their dog has that one anecdote, that one outlier news story that convincingly prove how dangerous giving people agency over their gender is, that one "but what about the kids!" concern.

[somedude895]

That's a great example. Another one is the question, whether gender dysphoria results from mental illness, or the other way around. The orthodoxy will say that the discrimination that trans people face is the reason for the prevalence of mental illness among them. We won't find out anytime soon, since it's a belief that is held sacred among the very people studying the topic, and at the same time there's a push to treat children with hormones when they get funny ideas (see Tavistock Clinic scandal). Thinking back when I grew up and my sister kept crying saying she wanted to be a boy – mainly because she wanted to fit in with her three brothers – it's a terrifying thought what could have happened had she been born a decade later.

Social studies aren't out to find truth. They're out to confirm their beliefs, basically working to justify their own jobs.

[Llamamoe]

> Another one is the question, whether gender dysphoria results from mental illness, or the other way around.

[We have the data](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1909367116), being trans is identifiable as early as 2-3yo, from the moment gender differences in behavior become apparent, long before any capacity to comprehend and adhere to complex expectations of boogeyman "transtrender parents".

You want to be treated as arguing in good faith, but fail to research the subject, propose questions that assume the conclusion, bring up vague anecdotes contrary to the statistics you're unwilling to consider, and disregard the fact that transgender children suffer from lack of treatment just as hard as wrongly treated cisgender children.

[TheHappyOddish]

> long before any capacity to comprehend and adhere to complex expectations of boogeyman "transtrender parents".

This isn't what the GP is arguing, did you reply to the wrong thing?

You quoted their question:

> Another one is the question, whether gender dysphoria results from mental illness, or the other way around.

The study you provided - whilst interesting - doesn't answer it or even attempt to answer in its purpose.

The study shows 3-12 year olds who are "socially transitioned and live in families that that affirmed their child’s current gender identity through a social transition" have a strong affinity towards their gender, just as non trans children who have their families affirmation of their gender do.

It seems odd to me you're arguing bad faith when it seems you're acting that way by misdirectly and providing studies irrelevant to the point as evidence of the GPs lack of research.

[RobotToaster]

>If you’re a young man with no prospects

"The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose." — James Baldwin.

[somedude895]

"A child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth"

African Proverb

[ricochet11]

if only they would read Baldwins work, but being an angry and lost online today seems to breed a hatred of someone who cared to talk about the lives of black gay men.

[FormerBandmate]

I really doubt there’s any academic rigor behind that tbh

[ctvo]

The original claim was the NYT abuses anonymous sources without citing anyone. The NYT, in the only occurrence of "researchers say" in the article, literally quote a person who's written a book on the subject on the next line.

We can move the goal post and now debate the person's credentials, but we can do that because we know their name.

[nonethewiser]

He’s not a researcher though. He’s a lecturer.

[jamal-kumar]

I almost forgot all this nonsense originated at somethingawful. That's really weird thinking back. I still say little jokes I first heard on there once in a while. People playing video games get so mad if you say "Get the power up and win the game!" haha

[naniwaduni]

I was generally under the impression that lecturers are not normally research personnel.

[saghm]

I think terminology varies a bit by university (and maybe even by department within a university). At the college I attended, I learned from discussing with a few professors that the computer science department hired professors either for the "tenure track" or the "lecture track" (although no distinction in terms of title was presented to us as students, as far as I could tell). "Tenure track" professors were required to teach one course per semester and produce research, whereas "lecture track" professors were required to teach two courses per semester and had no requirement for research (although they were welcome to pursue it if they desired). As the naming implies, lecture track professors were not eligible for tenure, and most of the professors in the department were on the tenure track. This meant that the professors on the lecture track intentionally passed up the opportunity for tenure in order to focus their time on teaching. I personally found the courses I took with lecture track professors to benefit from the passion they had for this part of the profession. There were definitely tenure track professors who also cared as much about teaching and put in the same amount of effort into the course they taught each semester, but the only courses I took that felt like they suffered due to a lack of effort on the part of the professor were taught by tenure track professors. The sample size was much larger than for lecture track professors though, so I don't know for sure whether it's actually more likely that tenure track professors to "phone it in" for their courses, but it certainly seems like it would make sense.

As for the lecturer mentioned in the parent comment, I'm not sure you can draw any conclusions about whether they research or not from their title without looking into how things work at their institution/department, but at least in my experience people with the title "lecturer" tend to actually engage with students a lot more, so I wouldn't be surprised if they spoke with the journalist with the intention of sharing their own first-hand observations rather than from a research perspective.

[dmonitor]

they sometimes get pulled in to begrudgingly teach a class or two

[User23]

Blaming goons for Trump is pretty next level. That’s butterfly effect stuff if it’s true.

[sen_armstrong]

Shiba, Amezou, Nishimura, and Kosugi; Kyanka and Poole and Degrippo; the nanashi, the goons, and anons: all pawns in Hideaki Anno's master plan, set in motion by the prophetic creation of moot's waifu of Axis-American descent.

[qikInNdOutReply]

Well, if you are young and hopeless, they have no help or solutions for you, but at least a rubber stamp..

And then, when the hotpot they ve been steering for a generation boils over, its all clutching pearls and "how could this happen".

[mc32]

Hmmm this harkens back to “movies influence kids” “music influences kids”, video games influence kids” etc that many people argued in order to censor aspects of music, movies and video games.