On stirred-up controversies

I hate these stirred-up controversies that keep popping up. Last Saturday, US soccer player Megan Rapinoe made an off-hand joke post-match, commenting that because she tore her achilles six minutes into what might be her final game ever, then “If there was a God, this is proof that there isn’t.” Predictably, this harmless joke spawned multiple hate threads on Reddit, with soccer fans taking her statement as evidence that she’s “a real narcissistic asshole”, “a thoroughly unpleasant woman” who’s “not very bright either”, and “the most unlikeable footballer in footballing history”. Obviously, these people weren’t seriously offended by Rapinoe’s joke—they already hated her and are looking for ways to manufacture a scandal. This is what I call a stirred-up controversy—a controversy that has roots in a real event, but reaches unwarranted levels of fervor.

Besides serving as a convenient way to dogpile on enemies, stirred-up controversies also reinforce the power of the people stirring them up. Jean Baudrillard noted this in his essay on the Watergate scandal, writing how anti-Nixonites made a case of political espionage into the impeachemnt of Richard Nixon, and how this demonstrated that liberals were right in believing that the politico-legal apparatus was a viable way to achieve their aims, thus rendering leftist revolution obsolete. Similarly, the soccer fans’ outburst situates them as authorities on which players deserve support and which deserve derision. When people’s demands are met, whether it is political change or a shift in popular opinion, they demonstrate to everyone else that “Yes, we did it. We are in control.”

The 2023 MODA Winter Show controversy at UChicago last year is another case of a controversy that spread beyond the event itself. Jake Quinlan, a designer for the show, used photos of Abu Ghraib torture victims in his mood board, which was published in a promotional campaign. These photos have been used in art before—I think most famously by Colombian painter Fernando Botero—but what Quinlan did seems somewhat glib because there’s no obvious reason why he did this (e.g. politically). This guy on Twitter sums up this mood board succinctly, calling it “nothing more than gratuitous shock value.”

However, bad art isn’t enough to warrant punishment of Quinlan or MODA as a whole, so people who wanted to depose Quinlan and the MODA board took their condemnation a step further into the realm of potential hyperbole. On TikTok, a user characterized the mood board as “commodification and fetishization of torture” and on MODA’s Instagram, a commenter wrote that “The entire board should resign” and that “[MODA] cannot begin to understand how absolutely horrific and traumatizing this incident has been for people.” Some other comments framed the situation weirdly—criticizing Quinlan for being a “white man” (Quinlan is mixed-race and the torture victims were men) and that he “centered this work around himself” (Quinlan only designed the outfits and did not model in the show. In an apology, he said his focus was “the exploitative ethos of fashion”).

MODA fired Quinlan and banned him from participating in the club due to this backlash. They issued numerous apologies, saying that they do “not support the aestheticisation [sic], exoticisation, or romanticisation of torture” and that the mood board image “wrongly glamorized the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib.” These apologies show that maybe the Instagram commenter was right—MODA didn’t understand why the mood board was offensive. Only people who think fashion is inherently aesthetic, exotic, romantic, and glamorous would think that just because Quinlan included torture imagery in his designs, he was making torture beautiful. But really, even if MODA knew this wasn’t the case, what could they do against an onslaught of people who relentlessly portrayed it as such and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise?

This type of stirred up controversy irritates me so much. It’s grossly inauthentic and manipulative but what I hate most is how people push their agenda under the guise of moral superiority. What the MODA story shows, and what Baudrillard noted, is that nothing I do can change how these people act—there’s no way to arrest the stirring. If you aren’t the target of the controversy, then you will simply be swept away—the messaging isn’t for you. If you are the target, nothing you do will change the course of the tide. The political nature of these controversies mean they can’t be influenced by things you can dispute.

Hospitals in Gaza are a recent incarnation of outcry that won’t be swayed by evidence. Last month, Hamas claimed that Israel killed 500 civilians by bombing a hospital. Shortly after, strong evidence emerged that these claims were false and major news organizations updated their initial articles. A couple days ago, Israel captured Al Shifa Hospital which Israel calls a command center of Hamas. This raid is coming under fire as they struggle to produce evidence for these claims (although they are still looking). Have new revelations affected the way people advocate for Israel or Palestine? As far as I can tell, no—and my friends who spread either of these claims on social media haven’t updated them or changed their positions.

Politicos will be politicos but I prefer to not be a pawn in their games. If you feel the same way, it’s worth bearing in mind that someone saying that something is scandalous doesn’t make it so, and that even if it is, it might not warrant anything further. Also, it’s better to have an open mind that’s quick to change than to stubbornly grasp for anything that supports your position. After all, if you’re anything like me, you’ll remember times where you were wrong, and more importantly, you’ve probably thought to yourself that you’d rather be right in reality than righteous to society.

The real harm of stirred-up controversies isn’t grossness but how investing (time, energy, money, etc.) in these issues makes it harder to make progress on the ones we’ll regret ignoring. After the 2016 election, Democrats were in disarray, pointing fingers and looking for answers to the question on everyone’s mind: “How did this happen?” Evidence now indicates that undecided and swing voters breaking right were the main drivers of Trump’s success (rather than turnout), potentially spurred by anti-Clinton news drops in the week before election night. At the time, however, and for several years after, conspiracy theories flourished among liberals. Facebook came under especially heavy fire due to reports that Russia ran targeted ads favoring Trump. This in turn spurred an investigation into Facebook by the US Senate (as well as by several agencies), the #DeleteFacebook movement, and policy changes by the company itself.

Nearly half a decade later, we have learned that Russia’s ads did little to influence the election. While correlational studies indicate that Russian activity corresponded with increases in Trump’s support, direct studies of how Russian ads affected voters show that they mostly targeted Republicans (not the critical undecideds) and were drowned out by other political media. All those lawsuits, movements, and late nights fretting about Russian interference years ago was predicated on a gut reaction to something that ended up politically inconsequential.

Imagine how this effort could’ve been better spent. It’s an open secret that legislators rarely read the bills they are voting on and let lobbyists write legislation on their behalf. Maybe those Senators could’ve spent some time legislating instead of a hearing that amounted to nothing. The Delete Facebookers and privacy experts would’ve been better served fighting bigger threats like the Supreme Court and Congress. Even Facebook might be regret their policy changes, given recent blowback to their now-strict moderation efforts.

Of course, this is all with the benefit of hindsight. In the moment, it’s hard to figure out that something won’t matter down the line—maybe it’s easier to remember to focus on the things that always matter, like having empathy and rejecting cruelty, but oftentimes it’s better to simply suspend judgement. Most informational traps we fall into only work due to emotional impulses that short circuit our ability to consider things. It’s also worth taking conflicting information seriously instead of only looking for ways to debunk. In any case, it’s a worthwhile pursuit to try.