rant · moment 2 of 29
Pronouns in Bios and the Great Flattening
from Episode 148 - Streak of Evil (with Yannis Pappas) · #148
3 min
Tim and Yannis riff on the backlash to the family tweet, then discuss how putting pronouns in a Twitter bio signals someone impossible to reason with, and how social media pressure flattens everyone into performing the same personality.
- Tim retweets advice to stop watching Game of Thrones and start a family instead of searching for meaning in TV.
- The backlash to that retweet was treated as if he'd said 'Heil Hitler' — accused of pushing women into reproduction as part of a patriarchal scheme.
- Women working until 65 at media companies, retiring alone with rescue pitbulls, standing desks, and pronouns in their Twitter bios.
- Tim says if someone has pronouns in their Twitter bio, you won't have a productive conversation with them.
- Brooklyn doesn't seem fun anymore; the characters and eccentric people are being driven out.
- Social media makes it easy to corral people into conformity — everyone puts pronouns in their bios because they want to do the right thing, but it flattens everybody into sameness.
- The goal is to make everyone the same and flawless, punishing anyone who shows a flaw instead of understanding that flaws make people interesting.
- People pretend they don't have flaws because they got a short haircut and aren't sixty, but society now wants to jail you for having any flaw at all.