Damn, I miss reading Fox News everyday now.

Echo Chamber Club

Note: this post was originally put in a draft in 2019. I am publishing it now, incomplete and unedited, five years later to make public the information I gathered when the site was live for the purpose of archiving it.

Background:

Created in 2017, The Echo Chamber club has been described as “subscription service that sends you information “from the other side of the street – curated and delivered to give you a different, better balanced outlook.” Founder and editor-in-chief Alice Thwaite writes that “The Echo Chamber Club exists to help ‘liberals’, ‘metropolitans’ and ‘progressives’ access and understand different viewpoints and stories that don’t appear on their news feed (“Who are We?“).

Thwaite uses the model of a weekly newsletter because, she argues, this method is “an incredibly flexible way of countering echo chambers” because they “are not restricted by computer code nor editorial structure so we can offer you many different points of view. It is unclear from the Who Are We? page who else is involved in the project aside from Thwaite except that

Overview:

To subscribe to The Echo Chamber Club newsletter, go to their homepage and type in your name and email. You do have to consent to receive emails as this is an online newsletter. 

After logging into the site, you will first see four books that the blog curator recommends, the option to receive uptakes by WhatsApp instead of email, and metablog posts from the curator. Take note of how many different platforms the website has including Podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, etc. offering subscribers numerous different ways to keep up with material and signifying a carefully considered social media presence. 

Locate Previous Newsletters on the top bar and you will be presented with a gallery of thumbnails of curated blog posts meant to “expose” liberals, metropolitans, and so on to The Other Side.

The rest is self-explanatory. Each blog post includes the contact information and core blog (if applicable) to the writer. Though the online website does not appear to have been updated in a year, I have do not know how frequently the newsletter updates (as of writing I have been a member less than two weeks). 

Review

I should begin by saying that this newsletter accomplishes something no other tool I reviewed has: offering a potential bridge between the far-right and the rest of us. together upon something we can possibly agree on. Something that all political and ideological persuasions, races, classes, genders, creeds. Nationalities and abilities. Can potentially share with one another. Though this is but speculation in an idealistic moment, I can hope that the voices of the populace can rise and declare in unison:

“The content curated on this archive is the worst fucking writing I have ever seen in my fucking life.”

The posts that Thwaite has curated from RSS, Reddit, and “top ___ popular news ____” are the Post-Malone of internet blogging. The precise “postmodern” critique on postmodernism from someone who equivocates “postmodern” with “meta” while failing to have enough meta-cognition to realize that self-referential personal indulgence is the opposite of meta. For a more nuanced approach to these bloggers’ content, I nominate Tumblr’s Anti-Porn bots. This writing curated here is the aborted brain-fetus of hate sex between that Guy in Your English Class Who Can’t Shut Up About Free Speech and The Devil’s Advocate, if not The Devil. These are the godawful college essays you have to fail even as you just know this kid is going to appeal and blame The System and non-ironically “ironically” takes I Threw It On the Ground seriously. I have read 4chan trolls with more subtly. Not only is it unclear why these people believe what they believe, it is often unclear what the believe given that I found at least two on the front page that start off talking about one thesis statement then end up arguing a point unrelated to the blog post’s stated purpose. 

Critiqing of the quality of writing curated on The ECC may seem to be an odd place to start. I begin here because, one, there is no way anyone can write this on the internet

[example 1]

Or this

[example 2]

or (oh my god)

[example 3]

And not be mocked. Far more importantly, the poor quality of writing represented on The Echo Chamber is not inconsequential to the aim of newsletter. The purpose of this newsletter is introduce The Liberal Coastal Elite to confronting material, yes. In that sense, it may succeed if we define “confronting” as “discomforting, or disturbing to our sensibilities” as in “the following images may be confronting.” Thwaite herself admits she  is often uncomfortable by the material she finds and presents. 

But is are the articles and opinions confronting in the sense of challenging our worldviews? I cannot help but wonder if a conservative who agrees with these messages might be turned off by the rambly non-sequiturs and seek out a platform like Fox News or Breitbart (god I just compared Breitbart to something as a positive) the same way some of us get headaches from Tumblr posts that are fine as tag rants (not that I do that or anything *ahem*) but as, arguments, do not follow coherently to anyone else outside the in-group. Neither “The Tumblr Left” or the Reddit Right educate an out-group on their own opinions because of how these opinions are expressed. I am not saying writing in this “night blogging” style should not exist. I am definitely not saying that all this writing intends to educate. I am saying that I question the efficacy of trying to educate a liberal and metropolitan audience to different points of view with material so poorly written that it does not adequately express these points of view.

Taking Thwaite on her own terms for a moment, if the point is to present your audience with confronting views, should you not present writing that actually confronts them in the sense of challenging them? If one truly wanted to expose your audience to alternate viewpoints, would you not at least want to try to present the alternate view in “the best light possible,” or, at least, the most coherent light possible? I am not doubting Thwaite is sincere and dedicated to this project. It is clear she has put in a lot of work and I admire her “grassroots” approach to finding and curating this work. I do a similar thing in my own research but less thoroughly and I know the methodology she uses is very labor-intensive and I respect her dedication and transparency about her process. I am simply wondering, again, taking Thwaite on her terms and goals, if her goal is best accomplished by showcasing writing that is essentially the “Springtime for Hitler” of the blogosphere: you cannot even parody this content because the blog posts curated here are so poorly conceived and executed that they unintentionally high-light the absurdity of the viewpoints expressed.

Okay, that moment of taking her on her own terms is up.

If you are going to spread pro-Putin and especially pro-Assad coverage in Syria you better fucking know what you are doing.

To be honest, I wrote the usability part of this review first and looked at the author’s introduction later. I was shocked to find out this was curated by a human. In my original review, I was about to suggest that while the general idea of curating a newsletter had merit, the human editors needed to better exercise editorial control their algorithms that seemed to be mining the 90% of Sturgeon’s Law. With human power comes a certain responsibility whether or not you are running a newsletter whose domain url alone secures itself on a WIRED listicle of Best Filter Bubble Busters or a shitty little blog like the one you are reading right now. 

This means your #1 priority in assessing your own work should be in what your newsletter and website accomplish, not merely your intentions. If Thwaithe was doing this for her own self-improvement, by all means go ahead! You exist trying to reach people, you need to be aware of the effects of what you share and not only your intentions in sharing it.

This includes understanding _____ misinformation by Russia. It is more complicated than “Russia is the #1 enemy” ____.

This includes understanding the consumption of war images and the deaths of people of color by white people _____.

This also requires attention to whose clicks you share, who profits (including monetarily) from the publicity? Like I get transparency but there are somethings you link through Onion Links.

The only way that any of us, really, can do this is by putting in the legwork and doing the research. Simply consulting with outsiders for methodology is not enough. To go back to this:

Questionable history of other media aside, let’s just start with the self-righteous “we don’t give our readers the content they want to hear…that is highly unusual.” Ma’am, I found The ECC on articles that list projects that accomplish similar things, including newsletters, and I started writing this little mini-series in order to examine and evaluate the dozens of material I found.

You are not the direct opposite of “every other news site.” The fact you think you are suggests you actually do not read that much news. 

You don’t have to be unique, it’s fine to just say what you do. But unless she is trying to really spin it — and I am going to take her on her word to be charitable — it is not a good idea to think you are the only one because it ____ you are not aware of the _____. If The ECC worked efficiently, I would not give a flying fuck. However because it really, really does not work rhetorically as someone who has read enough Fox News, Breitbart, and other popular right-wingers to last me a lifetime I won’t name to give press to all the while questioning my life choices. If you are going to share this material, you need to break out of your own filter bubble to genuine critiques of why this may not be a good idea or as effective as you think. You can still curate conservative material, but there has to be a better understanding of

Just saying “if you do not think this applies to you do not subscribe” is not enough. It locks liberals even further into a bubble in this dichotomy _____. “Don’t like don’t read” does not equal “don’t like don’t give criticism to unintentional contribution into ______.”

Here’s some constructive criticism: consider breaking the filter bubble not only on a “liberal/conservative” line or a “conservative/everyone else line” but also different points within liberals that include people who did see it coming, more voices of POC, rural liberals and leftist and the working class. This requires more work than just trending but 

Here’s another piece of constructive criticism: hit the open source academics.

Not to be a pretentious academic or anything, but to be an open-source research advocate academic, you do realize that there has been a fuck ton of research on the filter bubble prior to 2016 and much of it in open source journals, newspapers, or other platforms not blocked by a paywall? Hell, I’ve type up a list of lists for that kind of research.

The thing that moves beyond “this doesn’t work” to “there are ethical implications of the fact it does not work” ______.

Which raises the question: what is the purpose of consulting other points of view online? I have argued before focusing on “exposure to other opinions” is not necessarily the most effective way to fight filter bubbles but can be informative nonetheless. But let’s go to an even more fundamental question: is it even good to break through algorithmically generated filter bubbles if this is the result? What can you get out The Echo Chamber Club?

I do not know what one actually learns from the blogs collected on Echo Chamber Club? In fact I don’t think most people who already agree with the positions on Echo Chamber Club would be able to tolerate trying to read some of these posts. It makes me long for the comparative clarity and lucidity of Rudy Giulani trying to act like he’s been relevant since October 2nd, 2001. If you are reading this to learn what Hardcore Conservatives Believe, aren’t you better off just reading the front page of Fox News or its equivalent ilk across nations? The New York Post or The Enquirer? What do you actually learn about How Conservatives Think from this site?

One could argue “but Tech Theory, Echo Chamber Club is not made for that! It is made to confront your assumptions about the world!”

 

If you are here to be confronted, you won’t. If you are here because it’s easier, then fair enough. If you were completely unaware that people such as _____ exist, then yes just scanning the headlines alone might be informative. But if the ECC’s educational value is negligible at best, is there something that it is good for that may have not been intended by the creator(s)?

Yes. 

Letting liberals to feel good about themselves by feeling bad.

The entire concept of exposing a progressive to other opinions as entirely performative cultivation of an “Open-Minded” persona is so deeply engrained in liberal politics it influenced The Echo Chamber Club. I can just imagine a hipster sitting in a coffee shop on Echo Chamber Club waiting for her soy latte to-go feeling good about herself for tolerating a pro-Brexit article when she could have been listening to Kendrick Lamar instead. Especially if enduring the ungainly prose inflicted some pain, a displacement of good l’Catholic School Guilt as a small penance for 2016, a synecdoche of mass self-flaggeration on the left. (The construction of liberal identity around performative open-mindedness is a whole ‘other essay and I’m not sure I could express this better than people who’ve beat me to it).

Given that the creator’s whole take on the ethics of spreading pro-Assad comes down to “I feel discomfort” or “I have blogged about this” you very much get the impression that this is a very “I” centered project.

I have never come down as hard on this blog as I just did on ECC and I really, really, really do not like to come down hard on the projects of individual people and grassroots methods. I hate this partially because being critical and harsh just to be mean strikes me as Fake Deep Internet. I don’t like that shit in real life and I definitely don’t like it online. Even moreso, I do not want to drag the concept of a newsletter which I think could be useful! Mostly though, I prefer saying this kind of things to people’s faces (“if you can’t say something to someone’s face, best not say it on line at all). But given The Echo Chamber Club is a party of one, I have no choice but to get a bit personal over what is clearly a personal project when the consumption of the Assad regime’s framing of the murder of Aleppo’s citizens jerks an experiment meant to highlight information circulation to liberals into liberal circle-jerk.

Notes

** I have never heard this usage of “confronting” in American English. I learned it watching Australian news on YouTube, but a phrasing I quite like)

Works Cited