librarypunk - 048 - Have you read Orville Peck’s 1994 feat Callan and Alison

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

This week we’re welcoming back returning champ Callan, and new guest Alison Macrina to talk about That Article, Hoopla, collection development, TERF bangs, and more!  We demand accountability from Hoopla Digital and OverDrive regarding the platforming of fascist propaganda in their digital library collections.  Latest Hoopla update on Library Freedom Project: https://twitter.com/library_futures/status/1501962543300059136?s=20&t=iG5sKJBfzGRxg2rU0X9u7Q  Also check #vendorslurry posts on Twitter.  Early Follett Discover email: https://twitter.com/talya_cooper/status/1508499331657130001 We demand accountability from Hoopla Digital and OverDrive regarding the platforming of fascist propaganda in their digital library collections.  Latest Hoopla update on Library Freedom Project: https://twitter.com/library_futures/status/1501962543300059136?s=20&t=iG5sKJBfzGRxg2rU0X9u7Q  Also check #vendorslurry posts on Twitter.  Early Follett Discover email: https://twitter.com/talya_cooper/status/1508499331657130001 Media referenced:  https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/terf-bangs-cultural-history.html  Callan is host of radio show 8pm-10pm eastern https://uncertain.fm  Outback Witchhouse https://libraryfreedom.org/crashcourse/ https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/terf-bangs-cultural-history.html  Callan is host of radio show 8pm-10pm eastern https://uncertain.fm  Outback Witchhouse https://libraryfreedom.org/crashcourse/

Like that scene from the fountain where like Shibalba explodes and Hugh Jackman like has the like, I just saw God face with all the light. That's what it would be like. Are you talking about Star Wars? No, the fountain by Darren Aronofsky. Like he's a hack, but I like that movie. I like that movie. I haven't seen that movie in so long. The fountain.

It's like one of my favorites. It's exploration of grief. Oh, man. I haven't thought about the fountain. I also confuse it with the fountain head for a really long time. Oh, God. Sid, do you look like a 2000s web comic character? Thank you. That's pretty much my aesthetic. Yeah, like you could be in like questionable content or something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

It's the pinstriped vest. It's the halfway forward beanie and the all black and just like I'm wearing bright orange pants for the record You're wearing more black than I am It's only black from the waist up Rock and roll Cat I hear cat

I wish Arthur would show up Sabo's here and she wants to play fetch So that's going to be happening Unfortunately she's obsessed with it Oh okay I got no I got a cold open I knew I knew I had one Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Your podcasting statistics will be sent to your parents. It's library punk.

I'm Justin. I'm a skull-com, my librarian, and my pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they them. I'm Jay. I am an academic metadata and discovery librarian, and my pronouns are he. And we have guests. Would you like to introduce yourselves?

Sure, let's go in alphabetical order. My name is Allison. I am the director of library freedom. project and my pronouns are she her. I am Callan and I am, ooh, an engineering librarian. Let's go with that. And my pronouns are she her. And I'm joined by my assistant panda who may or may not be audible on this recording. Did you go and get your cat because you were family clucked out? She came and she inserted herself into the situation. Yeah. Arthur likes to be in meetings. So he might realize something's going. on and come say hi. He's probably sitting on a chair in my kitchen now, though.

Welcome. Cats. Let's see, I've got this. We've got a clip. I didn't do this right so I could do like the Conan. Would you like to set this one up? So we'll just run that clip. The disposal of zero to one by Peter Thiel. I promised my followers on Twitter that when I reached 5,000 followers, I would throw this book directly into the trash. Oh, yeah. Such a satisfying sound.

Yeah, baby. Throw it against the wall. And nothing like that empty recycling bin thump. Yeah, I had fun making that. I enjoyed it. Thank you. So. How many followers do you have now, Callan? I have, let's see, what's the latest?

I have 5,000 and 29 followers. Hell yeah. Thanks for making that thump possible, everybody. The thump heard around the world. Life goals achieved. I was recently looking to see if there's any way I could apply for Twitter verification, and I was informed that I do not have sufficient influence for my geographical region or career type. Yeah, or field or whatever.

Yeah, I've been trying to sneak us in on that too, because when you're verified, it forces other verified people to see your tweets more often, which is a great way to annoy people who should be annoyed. Can, like, non-individual get verified? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we should change it to librarypunk.c.cN, and that way we'll get listed as a Chinese state

affiliated media. Well, then you'll have the opposite problem where then you'll just, you'll be, like, shadow band or every one of your tweets, it's the CN warning. Yeah. All people will hear is the sound of censorship. Yeah, Caller. It's right there.

You monster. Yeah. Well, you know, Elon's going to put a stop to all the Nisc Koreans like me on Twitter now that he's got his board seat. He's honestly going to rescue us. Yeah. My voices are so nice and husky today. So did we want to talk about the library and light pipe article or is everyone sick of that? I'm just going to run that by everyone.

Do you want to do it? I'm just going to say for the sake of my own health, I didn't read it. There was nothing further from them doubling down on not retracting it, right? That was as far as I got. My first publication was in lead pipe, and now I'm like, how? Like, it's not even, like, even ignoring the subject matter, the methodology in it is shitty. So, like, if we want to be methods queens about it, like, it doesn't even meet that muster. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I saw it when it came out, and I was just like, what's this? Conspiracy mindset. Like, no discourse had started. It was just like the day it was tweeted out. And I started reading it. And I'm like, I don't understand what the fuck's going on in this article. And then I'm like, but it's the lead pipe. Surely they review these things.

maybe I just don't get it and I closed it and never thought about it and then like four weeks later everyone's like what the fuck is this article because like there could be an interesting discussion to be had where if they had taken it in the direction of okay why do people have like

why would workers have these thoughts like what is it about the workplace that fosters this because, I mean, sometimes I get, like, paranoid. I sure have a reason to. But, like, yeah, there could have been something actually of substance there. But nope, that's not what it was about at all. It's just so especially tone deaf to, like, in, you know, the times that we live in that, like, you know, we're talking about, like, you know, two years of all these library workers just, like, being. straight gaslit every single day.

So, and then you want to drop something about people who are like a little too paranoid. It's just, you know, I don't know. I mean, it's, it is very especially disappointing from lead pipe. I don't know what happened there, but it's nice to know that like, we're at the level with regard to the, like, with the discourse that like, this like rose and fell and I didn't even have to pay attention to any of it. Like all sorts of other people just took care of it. Meredith Farkas was up in there.

Becky Yose. I was like, I agree with them. I don't know what's going on, but I know that they're my homegirls. Yeah. And it's like, all you need to know, like, I will say that's a great library. They do some cool shit. There are some great people there. That being said, up until about a year ago, that is also where Rick Anderson worked.

So if that tells. The baseball player? Whomst? Yeah, I don't know. A scholarly kitchen. Oh. That guy. I am not the only person who's done this because...

Those O's were just excellent. Every time Jay has said Rick Anderson, I just say the baseball player and I, because I never remember who the fuck this person is. For some reason, I heard Rick Astley in my mind, so that's where I want. Anyway. Yeah, I would agree with what has been said about it, both in this conversation and and on the discourse machine. I think, I mean, I don't know.

I just gave this talk for library journal last week about performative listening. Oh, like they do? Yeah, I mean, yeah. And so this was in the context of a social emotional librarianship class, which I actually have a lot of, like, I think this class looks good from what I know about. But in this session, I was talking about how. And the kind of my definition of performative listening is often like stuff when like there's design thinking exercises or collaborative strategic planning exercises that are constructed with this like, hey, we really want to know what your thoughts and opinions are type of mindset. And then at best, whatever you share is just ignored by whoever you share it to.

But then at worst, whatever you said in that ideation session is just used against you in ways that you don't really even understand completely. And I really don't like conflating conspiracy theory thinking with passive-aggressive-aggressive academic consequences, because, like, those are much more of a thing in my experience. Because we don't like conflict in academia. We like, you know, having these kind of passive-aggressive nightmare, like closet bubbling ups forever and ever. And people don't really understand where they stand in organizations. And this is true beyond academic libraries as well. libraries in general. And to sort of conflate that, that like shitty conflict avoidant behavior from managers and higher ups with conspiracy thinking is like, is pretty. So it's definitely a take and a

choice to make that in 2022 after two years of managerial gaslighting. So yeah. I also just like, I really don't know what is up with this kind of culture of. And then speaking of library journal, I mean, this applies to them to this whole like quadrupling down. these situations where you could just say you're sorry, fucked up, that's all you need to do. I think it would be refreshing to see somebody just be like, we fucked up, sorry, we fucked around, we found out, we'll stop doing it. That would be so nice to see. And they could do that and still address the fact that maybe they did receive private abusive comments or maybe some people did go too far, but they equated the criticism, even like

the light ribbing with the abusive shit. Yeah. So like they, you know, if the, you know, I don't want to, I don't want people to get mad at me, maybe being like, well, if it happened, I didn't see any happen. That doesn't mean it doesn't. But like if it did, that's totally something they have the right to like talk about and address. Like, that's not cool that that happened.

But like, they can do that and still be like, yeah, y'all's criticisms. Those are, we agree. Or even if they didn't. at the end of the day, decide to take it down, which I would disagree with it and would still suck. Like, I would have at least liked them to have, like, engaged with the criticisms and, like, maybe address why they are still keeping it up at the end of the day, like, despite the criticism, instead of just going, we got abusive shit. I'm like, yes, but.

Yeah, it comes off, like, respectability, politics, tone policing stuff. Like, because there were some of you who said words, we didn't, like, you are all bad and therefore none of your opinions have any sort of merit. And I think that actually ties in with some of the other things that we were going to talk about today pretty well, you know? Yeah, because like, one, I mean, we've had Call it up, but like, Alison, why the fuck haven't we had you on this podcast yet? I don't know. It's not my fault. Yeah, I know. Like, we've been doing this shit for like a year. It's fucking rude is what it is.

It's rude. We haven't done a library freedom thing. I'm going to take it out on you during. this podcast episode. I was waiting for the list served to say that that anti-doxing toolkit was coming out because I was like thinking that would be a really great episode. Sadie was being strategic. Talk about that. I appreciate that you mentioning that, but you know, we are moving pretty slow on that

toolkit. Well, it's going well. I'll just thank you for bringing it up, Sadie. We in LFP are working on an anti-doxing toolkit. And the way that we have been building this is we interviewed all these people in the library world, mostly academics, because this is really the primary place this is happening. We interviewed all these people who had gotten doxed or had been the victims of serious online harassment campaigns. And we were basically like, tell us what happened. Tell us, like, in hindsight, like, what you wish you knew.

And tell us what you wish had happened or what you wish other people. had done for you, namely like your institution. And what we learned was a lot of things that we basically expected to learn that, like, the people this is happening to are like black folks and people of color and queer folks. And basically anyone who's working on any kind of like race, racial justice, any kind of queer, anything, you know, basically like anything to the left of center, right? And also what's happening is that their institutions are totally not doing anything meaningful at all. That they're like, oh, just ignore the trolls, forget about it.

And then the outcomes for these people that this has happened to, some of them just left their jobs. They were like, fuck this. I don't want to, I'm not going to die for this work, you know, or I'm not, you know, to a lesser degree, I'm not going to be harassed for it, right? People who were in tenure track positions, like straight up left academia. So anyway, we're working on a whole thing that's like, you know, so you, so you, so you might get doxed. Here's how, here's what to do. Preventative stuff, emergency stuff,

and then things for the institutions. But shit is hard and we're trying to get it really right. And so it's almost there. The other thing is we have no official funding to be doing this. So it's like basically like wherever we find time. Anyway, but coming soon. Now that'd be really useful. I actually presented today at a women in STEM thing at work. I was invited to just talk about like the repository and like how to show. share your work. And the whole thing was like research visibility. And I was like, hey, do you guys mind if I do like a little bit of like feminist critique of GALCOM at the end? And they're like, sure, that's fine. And then I found out that like everyone else was like, go on Twitter, talk about

your work. And my whole second half of my presentation was like, if you go on Twitter as a woman and talk about anything with a feminist critique, you will get harassed. And it's your job's fault for not protecting you and you need to demand better from your work. So when that comes out, I'm going to send that to them because I had no idea like who my audience was going to be. I didn't know if it was going to be like students or like the faculty women's group. I had absolutely no idea who I was going to be talking to. But I'm glad I did because everything else was very uncritical.

And it was very like, go have fun on the internet. It's a cool place with cool people. I think that this is all going to tie in well. So I guess that wraps up our, hmm, what segment would we call this? Enemy of the pod. You're not Brada. So enemy of the pod, that article.

So we are here to talk about Hoopla, which is taking the nation by storm. All the kids are into it. They are texting about hoopla. There it is. Yeah. There's so many Hoopla TikToks these days.

This is overrun. It's overrun. I heard my university news organization is going to get into TikTok. They did not, the lady who was present, because it was at the same presentation, the lady who was from the newsroom did not sound happy about it. She sounded exhausted by the thought. My dad is slowly getting his TikTok follower account back to where it was. His TikTok is pretty good, but I still can't stand TikTok.

Do we know that Yikyak is back? When did that happen? That was some shit when I was in undergrad. Yeah, it's back. It's back. I don't know that I would say it's better than ever, but it definitely exists again. The students at UNH were using it as like a whisper network when there was like a sexual assault thing that happened back in the fall.

Like that was their whisper network. I was like, okay. I was trying to, I remembered that the other day. And I was like, what the hell was that thing called? Yik yak. That's right. It's an app now. It was always an app.

Yeah. Well, was it? I don't know if I, I don't know if I had experienced it as an app. But I, uh, I don't live quite. within five miles of the college I work at. So I have to make sure to be on campus to check it for what I'm sure is undoubtedly a whole bunch of anti-administration posts. And they're not even from me.

Yeah. Raised them right. I loved yakbacks. Those are great. Right now we, so I'm looking at the, so I live in Boston. So here's some of the top yikyaks at the moment. Feeling like shit, does anyone have an Uber Eats discount code I could use? so I can eat something.

Beat, beep lettuce. Doing too much thinking atm. Shit's mad annoying, honestly. Relatable. Pretty solid so far. To the athletes who choose not to buy the stupid $400 scooters, we appreciate you. I feel like that's a very Boston thing to say. Are there any sororities for the Fenway 5?

I don't know what that means. It's probably a sex thing. Or like a secret organization. Well, it could be some eyes wide shut shit. There we go. Two birds of one. BEEPB lettuce is what Sadie's 2000 web comic avatar is called. Yeah.

No, that sounds about right. Yep. That's a podcast. Is someone just plugging their podcast? Are the people from Bip Bledis in Boston? Is that it? They're just like, hey, remember us? You never know, really.

I'm looking forward to it just becoming sex-crazed mania in like three hours from now, which is usually what happens. Mm-hmm. I was in Boston last night. Speaking of. Yeah, you were doing the Sex Crazed Mania. I saw the tweets. You went to see Perfume Genius, right?

Yeah, I was seeing Perfume Genius. Yeah, one of my favorite little students who I just adorned pieces was there last night. Oh, whoever did sound should get fired. That place sucks. The Royale sucks. Yeah, no, I mean, I was very close to the stage, but some of the, like, the bass. and the keys, the sound waves were clashing and totally overpowering the vocals, and it was not good.

But, you know, yeah. Otherwise, it was awesome. Anyway, Hoopla. Hoopla. We'll get there. So what had happened? People noticed that Hoopla, which is a digital service that many public libraries use, was platforming fascist propaganda and anti-fifference.

Feminist propaganda and COVID vaccine misinformation. That was all I saw so far. Pray away the gay. Lots of conversion therapy. Holocaust denial. Yeah. Vaccines and autism. What else?

Right wing's greatest hits, basically, right? Those are the main ones. Of the self-publishing variety. Yeah, like, I can be pretty lenient when it comes to fiction, nonfiction. is where I'm a little more around, yeah, around, like, should this, does this deserve at all to be in this collection? So. Also, like, you know, Hoopla, I'm pretty sure Hoopla is only used by public libraries. And they don't get to, like, choose, like, collections.

No, Hoopla's collection is your collection. Right, yeah. Yeah. You don't get to, like, yeah. Probably what happened is they were like, oh, we want to have more titles. than overdrive. So like we're just going to open this fire hose. And at the other end of the fire hose, somebody's just shoveling in like, you know,

like it's fully vanity published, self-published, like really, really silly stuff. And the other thing about it is that it's not even just that it's there and doesn't belong there. It's that it's the first results for a lot of those things, for feminism, for homosexuality, for Holocaust for COVID. So yeah, it's real bad. Yeah, and like even if, I mean, and not to say that we are or should ignore the subject matter, but even if like, even ignoring that, it sounds like like, and I don't want to be like, well, only traditionally publish things, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But it sounds like like the quality of the materials regardless of the subject matter. Yeah, it sounds like they just failed on so many fronts. Like how did it even get that far? Like your search algorithm is shit, obviously. your collection development is shit obviously. Like, you know, your quality control is shit. So that does make me think, though, because we are always wanting to get more content into libraries, especially as ebooks, and there has been sort of this back and forth about Amazon, that just makes me think if we ever had like a legislative victory that forced Amazon Kindle publishing to be available to libraries, would they just be just. make it available as one big block and you would have to buy all of the access.

All of the Omegaverse romance novels. Yes. I mean, they have that whole Kindle Unlimited thing. They'd probably just be like, here, have that. It's basically the subscription. I had it for a while because so many of the romance novels that I would read, like, the queer ones, would, like, so many romance authors writing queer romance start off on Kindle Unlimited because that's the better way to get paid until they start maybe getting more

a following and then they might move on from there. Didn't DPLA do something recently, like signed some agreement that would help libraries, like, where they did something with Amazon? That was DPLA, right? Before the crypto bullshit. I think you're right, but I don't remember the

specifics of it. Yeah, it was something to do. I remember talking with Kyle Courtney about it, and I'm part of like the New Hampshire copyright first responders. Like, he does that thing state to state. Yep. I remember we talked about it, and I remember him breaking it down and saying, like, it's a start, but it's still kind of shitty. But, like, at least it's moving in

the direction of Amazon, allowing libraries to have some of their, like, because, like, with Kindle Unlimited, that stuff is literally only, like, it's exclusive. It can't be put in libraries at all. So. Yeah, I think you raise a really valid point about the quality control and just excessive amounts of whatever the fuck problem that would, would likely exist. And in that type of scenario, right? Because one of the things that Allison and I and the other folks who helped us advocate initially for this, which included Sarah Lambden and Jenny Rose Halperin, who works with the library futures, we were trying really hard to get Hoopla to talk to us about how their selection process works

and how things like the ranking of their search algorithm are putting Holocaust denial materials as like the number of two results in those types of searches. And we we tried how many times Allison twice or thrice to have a meeting to have a meeting with. Oh, I mean we yeah, we emailed him a couple times, the CEO of Hoopla, Jeff Sumpurrothi, I think is his name. And we were so cool about it. We were like, we would really like to help you fix this.

and he never got back to us. We're not letting it go. It's just there's a small pause while we figure out what to do next. Yeah. Yeah, he had no interest in it. And when we had part of our campaign, you know, we asked people to get in touch with him. He sent back a little form response that was like, we're listening and learning. And also we took the Holocaust denial stuff down.

And they didn't. like at least some of it's still there and then they didn't touch any of the rest of it. You know, the unanswered questions that we have are namely, we want to know about their selection process. He said that it's a combination of humans and machines, but he didn't say like what combination, right? I mean, because this clearly seems like an algorithmically driven thing, right? There's some pipeline of just like, you know, like some computer making the decision to purchase all these titles, you know, from someplace. And, you know, something else we were wondering, this wasn't a question that we asked to the CEO, but just thinking about the process here,

it seems pretty possible that there is someone gaming the system here. Because, like, the fact that it's so many right-wing books of this nature and, like, not, like, you know, like you said, Jay, Kindle Unlimited has all kinds of queer shit all over it, right? Why would you? wasn't that showing up in the results for homosexuality? Like I want to see, where's the furry erotica? Yeah. Where's the Omegaverse? Where's the Omegaverse, right? I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming. Exactly. We want to, we want to see it. So what's going on there? You know, because they're, they're clearly getting it from one type of source, right? And who wrote the algorithm? Yeah. So we.

We asked them and he didn't get back to us, but we do, you know, we have information. And the information that we have is that they are paying attention to this very much. Yeah, we had a, I wouldn't call this anything like a whistleblower, but there was someone who works at Hoopla who was anonymously communicating with me for a little while. And I mean, they didn't have anything super promising to offer in terms of what internal measures were being taken, but it was clear that this was being discussed and dealt with in many different meetings with many different staff members for a while there. I kind of suspect that there's a couple different things in the traditional big tech playbook that are afoot here. And one is like, I'm sure

they would say, oh, whatever way we use to, you know, aggregate our collections is proprietary. And because we don't want competitors to do whatever it is that we're doing it here at Hoopla, HQ, we can't talk to you about how these things work in any sort of transparent way. The other thing is, you know, and this isn't unique to tech, but I think that that companies often like to wait for like the outrage cycle or the hype cycle to sort of move on from them so that they can, you know, they just basically like make a buffer of like responding to it for a little while and hope that people get tired out and stop pushing them. But yeah, I mean, I think looking into this, it started with the Holocaust denialist materials. I was the first thing

I heard about being talked about in the Massachusetts library list serves. And then the longer we all looked into what was on the site, it just became just like going into a rabbit hole of this, you know, all kinds of xenophobic shit, conversion therapy, disinformation, COVID misinformation. And that was, you know, kind of linked to one of our other demands slash like hopes to discuss with the CEO is libraries don't have the bandwidth to be able to do this kind of combing through these big aggregated packages to make sure that they aren't crammed full of this type of system gaming bullshit. And it's kind of gross because it feels like, you know, part of the reason

why we subscribe to things like Hoopla and libraries is because we don't have staffing or resources to do collection development of, you know, like meticulous collection development that would make it so that we didn't have to invest into like big content aggregating systems like Hoopla and or the price of e-resources too. Like there's an economy of scale with using something like Hoopla, but instead of using the dollars

of public libraries to advance information that those libraries would approve of and want in their collections, they're just creating an open door for this shit to come in instead. Right, because like, you know, and obviously like the model of like libraries not owning things anymore

is bad. That being said, one of the perks of things like Hoopla and Overdrive is that like if you don't own a thing, then like a book might get trendy for a bit and you might need a million copies so that everyone can read it. And then when that trend fades and like no one's checked it out in years, then it's not like, oh, you've bought a book, it's taking up shelf space and you have to read it. It can live in this collection that you license and that collection gets maintained by not by you. So there is the Netflix kind of model of it that is, like, especially for public libraries, like I can see being very appealing if, you know, we had other choices about like owning things and shit.

Yeah, absolutely. This collection development thing was something, because my first librarian job was in a very small private university that really didn't have a library budget. And I was pretty involved with like the tech services group. in the Florida Library Association. And I remember saying to someone, like, we don't have a collection development librarian. The vendors automate almost all of this for us. And they just blew me up.

And I was like, this could come for you. And they were like, well, that's, you know, that was sort of my first experience with someone from like a large institution where they've just never experienced being in a small library with that kind of restraint. And, but it also reminds me of libraries as like piggy banks where it's like, there's this service now. Like Amazon is now allowing libraries to buy this service. Well, just use the library to pay for that money because, you know,

God knows the cops aren't going to pay for it. So like we're just like an easy target to like buy certain services because we're the library and that's what we do. We buy certain services. So those things kind of conflate together in my head and cause a problem. Yeah. I think the other way we make ourselves an easy target is the clinging to neutrality. or intellectual freedom or whatever you want to call it too, right?

Because there certainly are, there were plenty of people on that thread that I initially saw in Massachusetts who weighed in with their feelings about not taking those Holocaust denialless materials out of Fouplea. Those people are dumb-dums. Listen, you know, in that way, I'm kind of glad that this happened, right? Because we needed, I mean, it sucks that we have to fight this and I don't really, I don't know how it's going to go, right? because Hupla is already, you know, they're already unresponsive to it.

But we're going to keep it up. But, you know, the reason I'm glad about it is because it brings out a couple of these big issues that many of us on the left in Library Land have been talking about for a while, like, you know, the role of centralization of collection development and automation, the increasing use of algorithmic decision making in libraries and in the world. neutrality stuff that that Callan brings up where like this is the logical conclusion you know that like the neutrality people think that what we get is like this beautiful garden where like people can pick the flowers that they want and then they want to grow more flowers but actually what we get is just like

the fucking fire hose of the right wing because they're organized to make this happen they're the ones who know how to push their views out in the world much more they have the funding for it that We don't. And so, you know, this is, this is the thing that's showing us what's going to happen, you know, what is happening with all this stuff that's been taking over the library world. Just to extend on the garden metaphor, it's called weeding for a reason, right? You have to tend to your garden. Yeah.

And, you know, hoopla makes it so librarians can't because it's an all or nothing. You either have the service or you don't. You can't pick through it. And if they had better, like, if they maybe were open about how they do their collection development and whatnot, where, like, you know, libraries can maybe trust the kinds of curatorial choices that are being made. Like, we don't have the time and resources to make those decisions, so we are trusting you to make them for us, you know, if that trust could be developed, you know, but it's not. Yeah, I mean, like, we don't have these kind of concerns about, like, J-Store. Like we tend to assume that like those collections, one, they're more modular, but two, like, we know that they're more or less better control. They also, J-Store has a specific function that it's, it's staying in its lane, right?

Like, hoopla here is, you know, I was about to say it's like going outside of its, you know, like it's like collection purview or whatever. But then I was like, where do these books even go? because part of the argument that we're, you know, that we did respond to because we knew people were going to say it is like, fine. Okay. Maybe there's like a research use of some of these texts, right? There are people who study this stuff, they need access to it, right? But like, that's what academic libraries are for, right? This is a public library collection. You know, the thing about the garden and the weeds and all this, it's like, I think that this, the neutrality people, obviously like, they're like, oh, it's fine. One man's flower is enough. man's weed and we're never going to take any kind of position on anything. I just saw your hand go up and I got distracted by the notification. And so now you go ahead. No, it's okay. It's okay. No, it was just, that was a perfect segue into one of the things I wanted to bring up, which was when you're talking about like circulating collections, like that's why I think that that whole, there's people who study this, they need access. That's a, that's a bullshit argument. They don't believe that.

We can just dismiss that argument because I don't think they believe it. But when you have have a circulating collection. Specifically, it's like, what do we value? And this has been the theme that we've had for the past few episodes is like, if you try and back this up with liberalism, you're going to say, like, everything needs to be in the collection because researcher might need it or because viewpoint tolerance or something. Whereas the actual answer is being queer is cool, being a Nazi sucks.

If you don't like it, fuck you. And then you just... Yeah, I think the way that Ben Miller, from bad gays when we had them on. The way he put it was being, like doing affirmation instead of defense when making collection decisions. Because like, you know, just because a book display isn't like overtly political, it doesn't mean that like choices and biases. Like if it's like a display of cookbooks, someone still had to decide what's a good cookbook and what isn't. Right? Like, these kinds of choices are made even when it's not like a hot button type of topic. So when people

pretend that it's not happening, they like are idiots who don't know what they're talking about. I was just going to liken some of this to one of my favorite pushback scenarios that I've had about collection development choices that I've made and talked about on Twitter is that by doing, by engaging in weeding or removing certain titles from my collection, I, Callan, am feeding the argument of the people who call libraries censors and those that undermine their own value of intellectual freedom. And there always seems to be sort of this implication from people like this that the book burnings and like litany of challenges on school boards, school libraries, and public libraries that have been just rising up daily pretty much in the last year and year and a half,

Essentially, it feels like these people either are just having some sort of like selective amnesia about all of that, or they're likening the action of me taking one book out of my collection that doesn't align with my library's collection development policies with these book burnings and these conservative mob threatening school board members. Yeah, and I think what so many of the, like, new. but since you dunking a book in the trash with that sweet fucking sound is that's book same as book burning like they always have that one picture in their head right and they don't realize that like yeah that's Nazi book burning but specifically that picture is of um it was like that German Institute for Sexual and Gender Research and that Nazi book burnings were largely trans and queer materials as well as communist, anarchist, and Jewish materials, anything degenerate. That's what book burnings are about. They're not about you making that sweet fucking sound by dunking that awful book.

It's about burning, like, it's about burning queer people and about burning communist people and about burning Jewish people because that's what all this information is about. It's not just information out of context. It is information about people and by people and educating about people to other people. That's what information is. Right, because we're not talking about free speech. We're talking about whether some people are humans or not, you know? Yeah, that's why the affirmation versus defense thing is so important. Yeah, if you're playing the defensive, like we talked about some of those letters that library directors sent and said, like, you know, the gender, queer graphic.

novel is a memoir. It's objective. It's won all these awards. And it's like, yeah, that's fine, but you're on the back foot. You're already, like, just saying, well, it's really good queer material. So you have to allow these degenerates into our library. Like, there's, you just have to be like, no, queer people are cool. I'm going to buy like every Chuck Tingle book. And I don't care if he's, like, pounded in the ass by Bill Gates because he controls my mind through the COVID vaccine. That's cool. It's fiction. I don't care. Like, go ahead and do it. Yeah, like the whole like, oh, no, queer people aren't all sex grave perverts. They're just like, you and me. And I'm like, no, put the sex crave pervert shit in the library.

Yeah. Let the sex crave perverts end, please. Next to the poppers. Yes. No, it's cool that people are sex grave perverts. Like, I want the people in harnesses at pride to like be in the library. That's only who I want in the library. It's serving to legitimize the narrative about queerness being pornography. it like, oh, but not this one. This one's not porn. It's not just about sex. Yeah. Queerness isn't about sex at all. This one won awards. Yeah, I actually just finished, I just read genderqueer while I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago and like reading it as a gender fluid person was like, no, this makes total like sense. Like I saw a lot of myself reflected in there and

made me kind of stop and think with, you know, the discussions we've been having on library punk, like, what would it look like if a library had challenged, you know, gender queer? And instead of, like, doing the defensive thing, they just said, you know what? We have staff and patrons who are queer. Sorry, they're cool too. Bye. You know, like what that would look like if, like, a gender queer, like, gender queer was challenged at my library. And what that would feel like, you know, what it would feel like as a gender fluid person to see that and see my library's response be defensive and like, oh, you know, oh, I'm here too. I get to be here too. And why wouldn't, why wouldn't we say that loud and proud? You know, we talk about like, you know, equity and diversity statistics and all

of that shit. Why not just be able to say, yo, we have queer staff who love this book, who think it'll be great for our community. We're going to keep it. It doesn't matter whether are not, you know, it has awards or anything. Arthur. Arthur. Hi, buddy. I love that cat. Yeah, you're totally right.

I mean, I think, too, that there's, God, I don't know. I feel like, like, library people, library workers, library directors are just so conflict diverse, too, that, I mean, I just look, it's hard for me to decouple this kind of current moment of book challenges from what happened during COVID and the combination of vocational awe and ridiculous social infrastructure expectations of public libraries that put so many lives in danger because of directors and consortium leaders sort of kowtowing to whatever political pressure was around them at the time. And I think, too, a lot about in the 2021 last was that the last midwinter? I guess it was. There was the council meeting where it was being discussed

whether or not to pressure at CDC to include library workers and prioritized vaccine rollout. And essentially the answer from the members of ALA council was a resounding, no, we shouldn't, we shouldn't prioritize ourselves because, you know, not only the vocational law stuff, but also because like we don't want to make ourselves a political target in the way that we were in regards to, changing LSI subject cuttings and things like that. And I think that, you know, that whole trying to elevate the literary merit of a work instead of standing behind equity and inclusion and diversity is like a classic example of libraries doing that whole like waiting for the other shoe to drop already sort of, you know, having brainworms from the other side of the political spectrum. I think that I think that we've got a lot of brainworms from right wing bullshit that have

warmed their way in through all these little cracks and our like deeply held ethics that we love to prattle on about right because like the intellectual freedom with no social responsibility argument is what gets us to Holocaust denial as shit into hoopla and you know similarly like these book burning book burnings and book challenges too are you know some people defend some librarians have defended the act of those burnings and bannings because those are representative of their communities. Yeah, so I think two thoughts. One is that like, I think one of the reasons why, and this is not a universal statement, obviously, but I think one of the reasons why, especially for liberals, that a lot of fascist and right-wing, not necessarily talking points,

but defenses are so popular, is because there is a kernel of truth in them. And the right-wing people know this. They're obviously coming at in bad faith. but they know that there's a kernel of truth, and they're wanting to weaponize that kernel of truth for their own purposes. But then, like, the liberals be like, well, you know, they've got a point and aren't thinking beyond that, right? Because like, because I'm one of those people, it's like, you know, anytime there's like some asshole that gets invited to a campus, right? And everyone's like, don't let him come on. And I'm like, okay, yes, I agree with you, but also giving that kind of power to the administration of my universe. like a bad idea.

Because I'm always one of those people, but then I'm like, oh, no, like, I'm falling into the trap. But then, like, I have the good reason. Anyway, my second point is that, like, I think also at the heart of a lot of this, I mean, obviously, some librarians buy into it, too. Librarians, if you buy into this, sorry, you suck. Then you're part of the problem. And I'm not afraid to say that.

Like, yeah, fuck you, basically. but there's been this tension, and this plays into vocational awe as well, of like, do we provide service to the public, you know, or our patron base or our communities, or are we servants to them? And I know this is something that Violet Vox talks a lot about with regards to cataloging, especially now that like, and I'm totally, like, guilty of this language of, like, the user-centric and user-focused, like, in. job ads and stuff. Because, like, yes, we should be thinking of the people who are going to use this. Like, who is our, you know, not singular library community, but who are the people who use our community. But also, when do we get to say, I have authority on this and I'm going to use my judgment to make decisions about this, even if my patron base doesn't like it? And I feel like that's what some of this tension is, is because, like, genuinely, some of these libraries' communities

might not want those books. Their communities fucking suck. Their communities fucking suck. And I know a lot of libraries will, like, self-censor because they know their communities fucking suck. And they might want to do, you know, a pride display, but they know that they'll receive nothing but hell about it. So I feel like that's another issue here is when do we get to stop being servants? and like when do we actually as workers, like, get to be like, no, I, you know, I have expertise in that whether I have a degree in it or not, you know, this is my realm. And I'm sorry, but I'm going to affirm these choices and these people. And if you don't like it, sorry, I'm the librarian and you're not. Like, when do we get to pull that card, I guess? And I think that kind of ties back even into the anti-doxing thing because, like, if institutions, had an approach for this, like being able to support their workers when it gets to a point where

collection librarians get to do their fucking jobs, then, you know, we wouldn't have to worry about the outtake on just the entire individual having to deal with that, all of that pressure and, you know, harassment and everything. It would be,

it would hopefully already be in place. Yeah, I will say, I've been thinking a lot about that expertise point in the wake of the response I got to my weeding of Peter Thiel's zero to one, which is the book that is, of course, being thunked into the recycling bin and today's wonderful sound clip. Many, many a person chimed in to inform me that I was just doing this for engagement, that I was just doing this because I didn't care about the ramifications of what the, oh, libraries or censors crowd would do. And in reality, I am a person who has a very

strong personal commitment to ethical development of technologists. I work at an engineering college. I teach ethics classes to engineering students. I spend a lot of my time getting engineering students to not make terrible design and development decisions that actively destroy the planet we live on. And in my conception of that, we need to not be giving shelf space to people like Peter Thiel, who would just as soon have us all living under a climate control dome in some sort of hunger games like hell, while he and Elon and Zuckerberg and, you know, whoever the fuck else, who's that guy, he's always Alexander, I can't think of his last name. Is he the Ethereum guy?

I think it's that guy, yeah. And then like all the other like weird apartheid, pro-apartheid, like South African tech bros who like all are kind of in that same like Elon Peter Thiel. Like those people do not have any place with influencing the hearts and minds of the students that I'm educating. And I believe very strongly that there are people who are entrepreneurs and successful technologists and successful startup creators and investors who are not Peter Thiel and who are people of color who are queer who have different abilities. And I would much rather have those be taking up the space in the library. And I think this also brings up

the question of cancel culture, everyone's favorite topic, cancel culture. There were some, folks who informed me that I was engaging in cancel culture, which was really interesting to me. you know, Peter Thiel being one of the richest men in the U.S., and also that book being in, I don't even know how many copies of circulation in libraries and bookstores and, you know, in secondhand sales, there's no way that a person of that platform, and this is not a novel idea coming from me, but someone of that sort of influence and reach is not cancelable. But to just bring it back around to the expertise idea, you know, I've been doing. doing this for 12 years. I've been managing libraries for seven years. I, you know, have been thinking about technology and libraries and engineering and the relationship those things have to each other for over a decade. So this wasn't just some like willy-nilly decision I just made on a bender to like get more people to follow me on Twitter. To cancel Peter Thiel. Yeah, to cancel Peter Teal really because like I knew that was that was just going to get me going. Get it going. Do it.

Hashtag kithunk. The funniest thing to me is, like about these people that have said this to you, Callan, is that like Peter Thiel fucking hates academia and not for the right reasons either. Like not for like the reasons we all do. Assuming

that we're all on the same page about that obviously. No, Peter Teal hates academia because you know, he it's, it doesn't espouse the worldview that he is trying to reach. You know, he literally

the Teal Fellowship pays people not to go to college. And so, you know, I think that really gets at, like, one of the things fundamentally here that we're talking about is that the discourse and libraries around intellectual freedom is just totally collapsed into this binary of like, are you allowed to have the books or are you not? Are they there? Are they not? And I was just thinking about this because I'm giving a talk

to the Delaware Library Association tomorrow morning from when we're recording this. And I looked up the ALA's actual definition of intellectual freedom, and it's so silly. It's like, I forget the words exactly, but it's something like to be able to get access to all viewpoints at all times. And I'm like, all of them? Like you, is that a possible thing to do? No. But, but just.

Like those like strip, like those like strip club billboards, all viewpoints all the time. There's just a lot of viewpoints out there. And like a lot of them are really bad and they don't need to be lifted up in any way. And like we're just, what a ridiculous. So yeah, I mean, it just to me is so much evidence of how we look at it in these very binary terms without thinking about who Peter Thiel is

and what he, what role he plays in the world. And specifically with regard to startup culture and engineering and like young minds and whatever the fuck, you know. And also these people's jobs. Like that, I mean, neutrality, like, we know this already. But like, these people will neutrality their way out of libraries existing anymore. Right.

I mean, I love that you brought up the whole Peter Thiel hates education piece of this, too, because then this is something that comes out in that book. I work at an engineering education institution. We have had students drop out of our program. and go on to do some interesting things. We've also had some students graduate from our program and go on to do some interesting things from a ethical and moral standpoint that I don't necessarily agree with, but I'm not going to get into that in too much detail here.

And I very much believe that, you know, my institution is certainly not perfect, but one of the things that we are pretty good at doing, and I think getting better at doing, is using engineering education as a time to prevent technology. from becoming these kind of like apocalyptic dominionist fascist, seesteading bros like fucking Peter Thiel. So I feel very, very justified and, you know, not only in my, in my beliefs,

but also in my expertise here and knowing what I think is appropriate for my institution to fucking thunk that shit and recycling been all the goddamn day long. And, you know, another thing that's really always fun with this too is like, you know, if any of you've ever also, you know, gone on, gone against like Elon or some of these other tech bros, the people that come out of the woodwork in defense of these people is just mind-boggling. And, you know, I mentioned to some of you that I, and some of you saw this unfolding, there were a lot of people who decided to, you know, do stuff like look me up, find where

my college is, look, like copy screenshots of my collection development policy, threatened to defecate in the building. I think that was one of my faves. and I'm perfectly fine with having a conversation on Twitter about, you know, why is it that I did this? Because like, no, but, you know, when somebody sees a video of you doing some shit like this out of context, okay, that's fair. Like, they just want to know what the deal is. What are you thinking? Like, is it actually problematic?

Whatever. Okay, like, I'm willing to engage with you on that. But I, in this instance, I saw two different modes of engagement. The more mild one was, oh, my God, look at you. you're doing librarianship all wrong with sort of the introduction. And then the other thing was just these, you know, these kind of like Peter Thiel fanboys who turned it into you are homophobic and you, you know, are, you're throwing a book written by a gay man into the trash. He, what? I didn't know.

Yeah. I know next to nothing about him except he fucking sucks. I'm just owning him. He doesn't get to be. Gay, not to be like no true Scotsman. He's voted off the queer island. He's voted off. Well, and this dynamic happens often.

I mean, this is something that... Gay dudes fucking suck a lot of the time, not to be one of those people, because I genuinely dislike that line of discourse, but... Right, yeah, but like the whole line of, like, you are doing this because of this person's identity. Always fucking sucks. It's just such a fucking complete and utter dismissal of... One of the main Nazi.

was a gay dude. I like my beer cold, my TV. Yeah, like, ask chrome was his name. This reminds me of, like, to get into a personal story, my wife has the worst time on social media. Like, they've just completely gotten off of it because every time they express an opinion,

somebody pops up like a complete stranger to be like, you're wrong. And at one point in time, they made a post criticizing some, I think it was a TV show. It happened to have a gay, couple in it and got like this slew of anonymous comments. I think it was on Tumblr, which is just part of the course there, of being like, you're homophobic because you didn't want them to kiss.

She's like, dude, I'm literally like so queer from top to bottom and that wasn't even the criticism I was making of it. You didn't support the corporate media. Yeah. And like, it's like, she makes a comment on a YouTube video and somebody hops on and be like, well, your opinion doesn't count because you're fat. It's like, there's just such a disconnect between what, actually happening and what these people like wants to believe. It is so immature. It's such immature. I love the people who always like the degree to which they cannot stand. The fact you have your pronouns and your bio is just like the deal they make about that is just so incredible. To be fair, a lot of really cool trans people that I also

think that practice can be kind of annoying, but for different reasons. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, and I agree, like, you know, and we, like, in my college, we do a lot of discussion about, like, how the pronoun go around is, like, not always the thing that people want to do. But, like, these people are doing it because they, you know, what always is with me is I, I'm a cat lady. I'm an otherwise unemployable cat lady. I think it's my favorite. With pronouns and bio, I have bangs and I have manhands. So those are the things that, you know, qualify me for. Those things obviously make you a bad, like. librarian. Yep, they do. How did you get through library school? The thing is, your bangs are even kind of like someone who is stupid could say they were turf banks. So how could they even make that judgment anyway?

I don't know. I mean, I'm just, I'm still trying to figure out the manhands comment. Because my hands are actually like pretty small. I have spider hands. Yeah, my hands are not large. Jay, that was rude. Don't call someone's bank's turf banks. Also, they're too long to be turf banks.

That's fair. If they were like... Are turf bangs, baby bangs? They're, yeah. They're like around here. Oh, man. Yeah. You're not brunette enough.

It's mainly brunettes. It's a very specific type. It's true. Yeah. It's like, you know those like... I'm going to be throwing a little shade here, but don't mind me. Like, you know those like... Nile female queer couples where it's like hipster podcast.

cast dude septum piercing turf bangs. Yeah, that that visualization in your head. Not that I'm referencing anybody in particular. And I feel a little bit like that might be me. I used to, back when I was a lady person, I used to have turf bangs. I didn't know, I did not know the affiliation there, but I'm glad to know it now. Yeah, I don't know how that got started. That'd be like an interesting, like, ethnic.

to find out how turf bangs became a thing, you know? Is it like a big, like a bright girl thing? I don't know. Is it that, is it that, that woman who spoke at the Seattle Public Library? Does she have turf banks? I don't know. What was her name? You know one that Megan, Megan something, right?

Megan. I almost said Megan Fox, but that's definitely about it. I hope Megan Fox isn't a turf. Megan Fox seems really cool. Yeah. I'm a Megafox supporter. What if the turf bang is, came about because, like, maybe they're all AI-generated avatars and it's meant to make it seem

like there are way more turfs on the internet than there actually are. And, like, you know, Robert Mercer or somebody is funding it. I think that my weed gummy just kicked in. Creating like a... You're engaging in conspiratorial thinking. I was about to say. Full circle, baby. Because, like, are there really that many people out there with turf bangs. Think about it. I feel like it's a bunch of like

people who play ukuleleys. Well, there's definitely a lot of those. Oh, Jay's just coming for everyone tonight. I'm not a good gauge of this because I live in West Philly and there's a lot of ukuleleys out here. Yeah, it's like white indie bands where like the FEMA vocalist has that

quality to her voice. That ukulele, that's, yeah. Yeah, that feels like my experience in Portland, Oregon in 2012. Yeah. I would say now where I live, there is no culture and there are no musicians. So no ukuleleys.

No ukuleleys. No ukuleleys. I'm going to put that on yikyak. No ukuleleys, shrug. There was one ukulele lady that I would see when I was driving into work. I think she was a student. And this is not like a high density ukulele lady area. And I was just like, I hope she's doing well.

I hope her yarn blog is like really doing good. Like, because she would walk to work playing the ukulele and I'm like, yeah, man, you enjoy college. College is fun. Good for her. Yeah. I'm supportive of the ukulele girls. There's all those people that go to college that like aren't really sure. Like they've always been boring.

And so they're like, all right, like I'm going to be the ukulele lady now. I knew there was a student my college that like wore a fish hat, like literally a fish, you know. And he's like, I'm a fish hat guy. You know, God bless. New kind of guy just dropped. Yeah. Yep. Because I mean, and he wasn't wrong.

Like, you would be like, oh, yeah, the guy with the, nope. I mean, I didn't talk to him. This morning, this morning, the student, one of my students was telling me about how, so we're in a three college consortium with Wellesley College and Bapsin College. And they were explaining to me how they can identify Bapsin and a Wellesley students on site. And apparently Bapson students are all wearing gym clothes and or plaid. And Wellesley students are well. wearing like some kind of knit tank top or what do you call halter knit halter top with parachute pants and possibly a bucket hat that's fit yeah are you at my high school yeah is this weed

yeah is it is it i think it is i mean it's super the zoomers love y2k yeah also okay bring back trip pants i spent this past weekend in greenpoint and the amount of like kick girl raver jeans and like raver culots is like the best way I can think of to describe it like parachute pants that are like caught off at the ankle I it's like it's truly something to something to see everybody looks like shit

it's great well you really did find the cultural history of turf bangs you really found it I mean I had to go look that was the first thing I didn't actually do any in-depth research and I'm not on my typical browser so like we have to use like you know chromium for this. And so I just have Chrome on my computer

because I was using Brave and but like crypto happened and also operas into crypto. Looking into Vivaldi though, anyway. And so I was just like, that was the first thing on Google even though I normally don't use Google. Oh, wait, is this because of Grimes?

Turf bangs? The Grimes bring back trip pants? I lost to throw the conversation. No, no. Turf bangs. Grimes is dating Chelsea Manning still, right? So every trans person is within like three degrees of separation with crime sound.

Every. Every single trans person. What a pop. Elon Musk to Chelsea Manning. Good for her. We won't go there. Yeah. My favorite post about that, though, was Chelsea Manning has just taken part in the most ambitious I can fix her project.

I'm waiting for the like conspiracy theory person, like people. who like think that Chelsea Manning is like a sciop or something um how they're gonna like work this into that wow yeah yeah yeah trans siop we're coming for you i'm just really happy for all she's been through that she gets to fuck a pop star now and isn't she like a furry she's like a trans lesbian furry who gets to fuck grimes like she's living her best life Chelsea is not a furry she had a persona she posted it one time we'll just have to get Chelsea on and ask She's... Please. I would love that.

So go ahead, Alison. I'm sorry. I was just... Just take my word for it. She's not a furry. Allison, do you... Have you fucked Chelsea Manning? No.

Thank you, Sadie, for saying it. Thank you. I have not fucked Chelsea. Give me this, like, lavender marriage tea for tea. She just knows about shit and she's very online. You know? So, like, it doesn't surprise me that somebody probably made her for Sona. Yeah.

And I'm like, like you said, she is connected to literally every trans person in the U.S. Everybody, they all know each other. And she knows them all. And so, so probably like a lot of people like make her cute stuff like that, right? Are we going to talk about libraries or we just going to talk about like more fun shit for the rest of the episode? I have no idea when you guys have to go to bed. Yeah, what else is in our notes? Yeah, we're running close to an hour and a half now.

Well, I see the thing about like school libraries, and I'm not a school librarian at all. Well, the fallout thing is resolved anyway. Oh, yeah. I've been focused on other shit this week, sorry. This was the fall at thing, right? Yeah, they were like, oh, shit, okay, we won't do that. And so the moral of the story is, like, getting mad on Twitter, it works. Yeah.

Yeah, I want to just put a pin in that because I have heard from, what is the thing that we call the, like, midwinter now? live love library Live laugh love Yeah Or was this at PLA I can't remember It was some It's like ALEC core

There was some recent shit Where there was Or no no Maybe I'm thinking of Tracy D Hall The executive director of ALA made some comment In recent months

About how the library Twitter outrage machine Is you know ruining everything And we don't see the work that like OIF is doing and yada yada yada there are like some cool people in OIF but it's yeah yeah i mean i think that this is where we get back to you yes we love TJ we were roommates at Cove for Lib in 2020 oh that's dope yeah t j's old OG friend of ours we did karaoke

we did Paradise for the dashboard light together oh that makes a lot of sense yeah so yeah to bring this back to like initial discussion about lead pipe and same deal you yes there are people on twitter who say naughty words sometimes or like maybe they're not as polite as you would like them to be but the amount of advocacy that actually has been effective through the library twitter outrage machine i mean there's there's a demonstrable list of shit that has gotten accomplished i mean in this fallout thing most recently like aLA doesn't have to this whole idea i mean this this kind of reminds me of like this like kind of emergent cyber sociology field that kind of arose like 10 10ish years ago. And at the time researchers in this field were talking a lot about how there was this sort of like fetishization of real life over digital life.

And so digital life was somehow inferior and like not the same as real life. And whenever I hear shit like, you know, oh, the Twitter activist. who cares about anything they're doing they're doing it all wrong or they're not appreciating anything we're doing in real life as like i just think of this like this digital dualist like sociology shit that i thought we had kind of collectively moved on from because i'm going into full donna harroway mode yeah yeah so when we had um a couple episodes ago we had the stand-up comedian uh jake flores on he's one of the hosts of poddam america he's pretty cool and he loves He loves fucking trolling, like, idiots on Twitter. Like, he is not afraid to, like, get piled on because it's, like, it's kind of like the sort of, like, and I brought this up in the episode, like, anarch, like, late 19th century, like anarchist tactics where they realized how absurd fascism is. And so their tactics started highlighting absurdity. So, like, with one thing we talked about about, like, library Twitter outrage is that, like, sometimes, yes, it can be stupid. Because sometimes it feels like people just, like, want to have their takes heard. I'm guilty of this too. I love the sound of my own voice, even if it's, like, digital and not me speaking. I'm an egotistical asshole. But sometimes it's like, am I contributing anything? But also, there are, and not, you know, not to be like, the.

this is valid and this isn't, but like, you know, trolling or all going against one specific thing, yeah, that is an effective tactic, even if it's just like making fun of something. Like if we're all just like shitting on this lead pipe article, like, yeah, some people were like doing like the valid criticism thing, you know, that was important good for them. But for the people just like making fun of it, that's also like an effective tactic and not to be looked down on. One of my favorite days on Twitter was when we all came after Maddie Glick. Oh, God. Yeah. That was a good one. Pure, pure unhinged ideology. You know, and right. And we got that out of it and like, it was a great time. And like also, you know, it's like nice to be like, oh, my people,

they're so funny and great. And we need that part of the Twitter experience, the library Twitter experience too, you know. Yeah, like when it's not just you be like, I'm going to add my take now because I, you know, but when it's like more like we're doing this together. Yeah. That's when it really works. Always the fundamental issue is something that is serious, even if it's like totally ridiculous and like absurd, you know, like the fucking like New York Times writing an op-ed once a year about like something to do with us, right?

Like this is serious because it does impact us. Yeah. And so like, you know, like we feel it. we feel that impact. And so knowing that our people are all also agreeing that this is not okay and we're going to like totally roast this motherfucker. Yeah, it's just a, it's a really great solidarity feeling to me, trolling. Yeah, yeah. And I'll also put one out there for like, there's always a lot of, whenever we have these kind of people waltzing in either intentionally or unintentionally poking the library Twitter bearer, I am 100% there for the pile on personally. I mean,

I don't necessarily always need to be a part of it, but I don't think that it's inherently unhealthy because I do think that there are people who see the argument amplified to some extent. And like sometimes they don't get it either. Like I was very, very disappointed to see a researcher that I actually have a lot of respect for or had a lot of respect for come in on that conversation about that Seattle woman who was like talking about homeless people dying in the snow because the branches closed due to snowstorm. And, you know, a researcher who, like, looks at cyberbullying came in and tried to make this whole big point about how, you know, librarians got this all wrong. And, you know, we should take pity on this person because she's on the same side as we are and all this nonsense. And it, what always kind of astonishes me in those, those sorts of like third party takes is that there's no consideration of libraries at library workers as human beings with agency. or, like, reasons for why they might be upset and, like, on a hair trigger anyway, because their lives are fucking, like, propping up the decayed social infrastructure of the U.S. 24-7. Are we servants, or do we provide services? Yep.

That was blowing an air horn. There is. Cthunk. We need, like, an air horn cthunk. Yeah, air horn cthunk. Yeah. Oh, yeah, there we go. I was already about to say that I'm sleepy and I need to go to bed soon.

And I feel like that from Callan was like kind of a mic drop. So, you know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I embraced absurdity and affirmation.

Yes. Yeah. Is there anything that you want to plug that people should be looking out for that I should put in the notes before we close out or did you just want to go to bed? Well, that is a great question. That's a great question. Well, one thing I will plug that is not especially related to this at all, but it's something that I like people to know about is that I am the host of, and this is like not the worst time of the week for all of you because I want to you record this show. But I'm the host of a radio show from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern on a community radio station right in Boston called Uncertain FM.

and if you are into punk, post-punk, post-harkcore new wave experimental electronic shit, this is your shit, this is your jam, shows called Outback Witch House, brought to you every Wednesday, 8 to 10 Eastern. Goth weirdos in the house. Yeah, represent. Callin's so much cooler than me that that's what she had to plug, and I'm like, you can apply for my training program. No, I'll be way more. There is one more. It's your last chance.

there's one more LFP crash course and then we don't have money to do it ever again well at least for the foreseeable future we have no money set aside for that so please come and check it out in fact two of the four people who are here on this very podcast have done various LFP

institutional things I don't know what we call them like as a collective noun because there's like LFI and these crash versus but whatever you did one of them and I think it was nice I think I've just hung out with you a lot Well, then why don't you just fucking do it? Well, you know, if you join the training, then we, uh, we instill the pure unhinged ideology into you and that, and you'll also get to be around the other people

who are also getting the gateway, it's a gateway drug. Yeah. Yeah, this is long as hell. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Oh, I mean, whatever. No, no, this is great. It's great. I was just making fun of us.

I really like, I like that we were able to, to, to, look at sort of a lot of different interlocking issues with this that, I mean, I don't think us library people spend enough time thinking about. Yeah, everyone seemed to be having fun, so I didn't want to try and normally rope it in an hour. Yeah, I drank two glasses of wine. That was fun. We saw that. Rock and roll. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Yeah, it was great. We loved it. Good night.