A Few Comments Possible
I am an admirer and fan of The Atlantic‘s stable of world-class bloggers. In particular, I religiously read Ross Douthat, Megan McArdle and Ta-Nehisi Coates. One of those whom I don’t read is Andrew Sullivan, for reasons that Alan Jacobs pretty much nailed here.
It was through Ta-Nehisi Coates that I found out that another blogger (are you still reading?), Ann Althouse, got engaged to one of her commenters. I don’t read Ms. Althouse either, although I am aware of her. But I was arrested by Mr Sullivan’s response to what ought to be a celebration-worthy event — an engagement! —: his post was titled No Comment Possible.
Of course, saying “no comment possible” is, by itself, a ton of comment. In fact, Mr Sullivan comments further: “Ten days of emailing … and she was ready” (the slut!) and quotes another blog, the famously moderate and even-keeled Pandagon: “OMFG.”
The disdain is palpable.
This is where, to make this post even more tedious than it already is, I chime in with my own life story. My fiancée and I, the woman with whom, as a young Catlick, I fully intend to spend the next 60 to 80 years, we met through Facebook. We met through a common (real life!) friend, but we first interacted through Facebook. Since she was working abroad at the time we learned about each other through months of exchanged messages. We met up on the day she landed in Paris and basically moved in with each other in the first week after we met. A few months (a few months!) afterwards I proposed to her.
I feel the need to point out, by way of context, that neither of us are “losers.” We were both (still are) students at top schools, I am very active socially, and haven’t had any problems meeting women since that awkward phase in high school. I point this out not to brag but because a lot of people assume that people who meet on the internet are simply people who can’t meet people romantically any other way. This was not our case. (By the way, people say that as a bad thing, but I actually think it’s fantastic that people who otherwise couldn’t date can do it that way. 1 out of 8 couples married in the US 4 years ago met online, and that’s great.)
Suffice it to say, plenty of people we know were not overjoyed. In fact, it revealed a lot more about some of our so-called friends than about us. How long have you been together? How old are you, again? How did you two meet? On Facebook? That’s, ah, uh, interesting…
Most of these “friends” commented sparingly (some, not so much), but that did not make their disdain for the situation, if not us, any less palpable.
So I just wanted to write in defense — since attacks there are… — of Ann Althouse. I think more people need to understand that the internet is not a fad, it’s here to stay. It creates and facilitates genuine human connections between people. I think more people, most importantly, need to mind their own damn business and refrain from passing such glib and facile judgment on other people’s private lives. Is it possible to fall in love at first sight? Damned if I know. But if one of my friends does it? Mazel tov!
Of course, one of the reasons I feel compelled to write here is because of the cognitive dissonance: Mr Sullivan is, after all, one of the most talented and articulate proponents of same-sex marriage, and no doubt needs no education on the discrimination, both soft and hard, that can befall human beings based on their relationships. Yet he doesn’t miss a beat in responding derisively to Ms Althouse’s engagement even though… Who cares?
What should be treated as an unremarkable event, worthy of cheer if anything, is held up for derision, by someone who ought to know better. So I felt the need to speak up.
(Of course, the New York Times story on the engagement is even more risible, but I didn’t expect any better from the NYT, although the story fails at basic rigor, common sense or humanity.)
is this post about althouse or about you?
Look, it’s not that complicated. Online relationships are weird. Flirting between a blogger and a random commentator is double weird. Marriage after three dates is just fucking stupid. Toss in a raging storm of Ann Althouse hatred, plus Althouse’s own special brand of comic cluelessness, and you got a fun little story to pick over for a while. The bizzaro marriage is a final confirmation of what we all already knew, namely that this woman is batshit insane.
As for minding our own business? If Althouse didn’t want people to gossip about her private life, then maybe she shouldn’t have posted about it on the internet.
— raft · Apr 12, 08:57 AM · #
Actually, it’s about Sullivan and a few others.
And look, I disagree with you. Online relationships are no longer weird. Online dating services have been around for more than a decade now and countless people use them. And here in France, people have been using the Minitel to date since the 80s. Note that I haven’t used online dating services, but I honestly don’t see how anyone should find them weird in 2009.
Same thing with flirting between a blogger and a commentator. Why? I mean, honestly: why? Why is it weird? Why is it any weirder than, say, flirting with someone in line at Starbucks?
And marriage after three dates being “fucking stupid”… What particular expertise do you claim on the subject? I have friends who dated for like 5 years, moved in together, and then broke up after 3 weeks. That, to me, is fucking stupid. If a friend has met someone and wants to get engaged after three dates, I might be surprised and curious, but I haven’t been in his shoes, how the hell can I claim it’s stupid? I mean, seriously?
We’re talking about two private individuals we don’t know, who have made a decision that by definition none of us can understand because we haven’t been in their shoes and can’t understand their innermost motives, and yet we feel entitled to heap judgmental scorn on them.
That’s what’s pretty fucking stupid, in my opinion.
— PEG · Apr 12, 10:40 AM · #
This certainly underscores the wisdom of your not reading Sullivan. I’ve never read anything by him that was worth reading, and so stopped doing it; one of the major reasons is that “minding his one damned business” is something he is congenitally incapable of doing — which is why I don’t consider him a conservative, no matter how much he and his clacque shout that he is, he is, he really is. Sullivan is a poster boy for the large (and, unfortunately, growing) crowd of people who just can’t seem to grasp that merely because something exists doesn’t mandate that one need have an opinion on it.
— Tim of Angle · Apr 12, 12:12 PM · #
My wife and I met on Mindvox. This was back when scanners were a rarity, and digital camera unknown, so our friendship was conducted entirely through text. I think that’s an excellent way to begin to get to know someone.
I also rememember another online friend at the the. She was bright and funny and expert at IT and had more than a few online admirers. I remember her once lamenting, half seriously, “I just want someone to want me for my body.”
Sullivan’s lack of self-awareness about his attitudes towards women’s sexuality is fascinating.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 12, 12:35 PM · #
Lol how can it be that I agree with PEG on something?
I thought Althouse’s love story was charming and romantic.
It is like a chaste victorian correspondence.
Since love and sexuality are initiated by brain function, what better way to really get to know someone, than as a pure intelligence scraped off of physical packaging and environmental distractions?
After 4 years of meeting minds, I think Ann Althouse and her sweetheart have a much better chance than most.
To give Andrew credit, I think he wonders if Althouse’s erstwhile suitor presented himself factually. After four years, I would believe the guy.
It is true that stalkers and predators roam the virtual spaces, but 4 years should be enough to reveal it.
In general I enjoy Sully. I find him hugely more intellectually honest than most soi disant “conservatives”.
— matoko_chan · Apr 12, 02:35 PM · #
Tony: Thanks for your comment.
matoko: Heh. Yes, I actually very much agree with your comment. I need to pinch myself. ;)
— PEG · Apr 12, 03:19 PM · #
I think that in future meeting/love/marriage via internet will indeed become more common place especially for persons of certain demographic or professional categories who have to live and deal with realities like geographic distances between acquaintences and loved ones, easy access to connecting virtually, and the (little) time one has to develop a social life outside of work or study.
In many ways, its like the dating agencies, and internet dating sites – oh the taboo and stigma attached to them!! But hey, lord knows it aien’t easy meeting a person who could become special to one’s heart.
btw, you do read Sullivan otherwise how would you have found out he had made that snide remark about Althouse? ;-)
— JB · Apr 12, 09:21 PM · #
I agree with PEG that the snideness on Sullivan’s and Pandagon’s part is kind of shitty, given the occasion (what is the right way to find someone?), but there’s something fitting about the fact that the blog-triangle implicated in this comprises Pandagon, Althouse, and Sullivan. Three sites where you can regularly find people fighting – to use (to my own surprise) Jonah Goldberg’s metaphor – with whatever rusty, jagged stabbing implement is close at hand.
— Matt Feeney · Apr 12, 11:08 PM · #
it’s just empirically wrong to say that meeting people online is “weird” (i used to say it was weird years ago, but in my defense it was much rarer back in the day). ironically people who think it’s weird need to get out more. on a non-empirical level, people should chill on calling other people “weird” in such a righteous manner. there was a time when people would say the idea of two men being married was “weird,” but now saying that that’s weird is totally beyond the bounds of civility in many circles (though not all).
and for the record, i met my fiance in college, not via the internet. but i know people. it’s not that weird anymore. for many people not meeting people over the internet is weird (though these are still a minority). though i am skeptical about the value-add of meeting over the internet in a proactive and exclusive manner for many people, it’s a pretty normal part of the social portfolio now.
— razib · Apr 12, 11:51 PM · #
1. There is a lot of hyperbole about Sullivan here. He is who he is, an excitable and sometimes pretty dense (In the early days after 9/11 he wanted to call war friendly young people “Eagles”). But he address lots of important issues, takes stands, and will admit if he was wrong. He also publishes regular substantive dissents. He has made a visible commitment to intellectual honesty. The whole thing about conservatism being about doubt and his calling out of Christians and Conservatives hegemonists are both valuable in my opinion and also the reason some Christians and Conservatives don’t like him. He betrayed the side. Plus he accumulates a lot of interesting info.
2. Some young engagements work, but often they don’t. Same with 2 week engagements. Experience tells us this. THe younger you marry the more likely you a re to divorce. I don’t know anything about on line dating.
3.As stated above, If you don’t want anyone messing in your business then don’t talk about your business on your blog.
4. My dad was the son of a protestant (United Brethren) minister in in Ohio in the 20’s and 30’s, in places like Youngstown, Cleveland, Arcanum, Cincinnati…. His dad actually was a circuit rider in his early career, riding around to different churches each week on a church supplied horse. He used to tell me stories about arranging football and baseball games with the “catlickers.” They lived in a different neighborhoods and they were the enemy. it was like rival gangs. THen after the war he got engaged to a Catholic woman and his mom wrote him a series of letters expressing her grave fear that he was going to burn in hell.
— cw · Apr 12, 11:51 PM · #
I think it’s fair (and necessary) to distinguish between meeting someone online (through, say, eharmony or facebook) and meeting someone in your own heavily moderated comments section. Without delving too deeply into this swamp, it’s also probably worth mentioning that the people criticized by this post have had long experience with Althouse and their objections are personal and specific. It would be strange indeed if such objections could be overcome by a general paean to online dating.
— southpaw · Apr 13, 02:02 AM · #
Online relationships are one thing. You don’t see a qualitative difference in a relationship between a blogger and one of her commenters? Seriously?
It’s not about that they met online; it’s about where they met online – at Ann Althouse’s personal blog, and now they’re getting married having met three times. And, of course, there’s the element where Ann Althouse thinks that anybody who finds that weird just hates her personally, and that they probably do so because they’re ugly.
To be shorter, what’s so fucking weird about it is that it’s a relationship based only on an interest both Ann Althouse and her fiance share: Ann Althouse.
— Chet · Apr 13, 05:10 AM · #
The internet – the greatest dance hall of all time…
— ell · Apr 13, 06:29 AM · #
JB: Agree with your first paragraph.
And, as I said in the post, I happened onto Sullivan’s post through Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog. Since writing this post I have actually been visiting it infrequently to monitor possible developments in “the affair.” ;)
razib: Absolutely agree.
cw: About Sullivan: I’m not saying Andrew Sullivan is a bad person, or even a bad blogger. But that was certainly a bad post. It doesn’t mean that Sullivan isn’t smart, or (usually) intellectually honest, or what have you. But this particular post was boneheaded, is just what I’m sayin’.
I would actually like to see data on this — something tells me it might very well be the other way around.
After all, people who get engaged early tend to come from traditionalist ethnic and/or religious background where people tend to get married and stay married. Whereas people who get married at 35, after dating for three thousand years, and living together for three years, and getting married because, you know, her biological clock is ticking, and since she thinks she won’t make partner at her firm she might as well pop a kid out, these rational, late (you’ve had time to experience life! To _really_think things through!), NY Times M&A page, bobo weddings, tend to end in divorce (and remarriage).
I might be wrong about this but to me the proposition that the younger you marry the more likely you are to divorce seems far from obvious.
I’m sorry, but that’s a bit easy. Opening a blog does not give the world license to insult you and pass facile, bullyish judgment on your private life. I mean, legally, anyone can say anything about anyone short of libel, but it doesn’t mean that you should and that when you do other people shouldn’t call you on it.
By the way, this “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” mentality, while generally right, is one of the barriers of entry to blogging, especially for women, which is a shame, because I believe there would be a lot more value if a lot more people blogged.
southpaw:
Why?
I don’t mean this rhetorically. I just honestly don’t see a distinction.
Chet:
Honestly, no.
Not to be as blunt as you, but how the fuck do you know?
The thing that infuriates me most about the NYT story (which is much worse than Sullivan’s post) is the discount-rate analogy about Althouse-as-princess and commenter-as-commoner. Why must bloggers either be losers pontificating in their pajamas or fearsome princes of the universe? How about just human beings who write online? And the same thing about commenters? (Many commenters, by the way, are also bloggers.)
As far as Althouse’s relationship is concerned, it started on her blog, but how do you know what it’s about or how it works? We know it migrated from the comments section to email. How does the fact that it started through the comments mean “that it’s a relationship based only on an interest both Ann Althouse and her fiance share: Ann Althouse.”? I mean, maybe it is. Maybe the dissenters are right. I don’t know Ann Althouse and her fiancé. Maybe she’s just looking for a rube to worship her, maybe she’s crazy, maybe this whole thing will blow up in three weeks.
But here’s the thing: I don’t presume to know.
I don’t presume to know, first of all because I can’t know, and second of all because doing it would be rude and kindless, not to mention a waste of time.
— PEG · Apr 13, 08:27 AM · #
“After all, people who get engaged early tend to come from traditionalist ethnic and/or religious background where people tend to get married and stay married. Whereas people who get married at 35, after dating for three thousand years, and living together for three years, and getting married because, you know, her biological clock is ticking, and since she thinks she won’t make partner at her firm she might as well pop a kid out, these rational, late (you’ve had time to experience life! To _really_think things through!), NY Times M&A page, bobo weddings, tend to end in divorce (and remarriage).
I might be wrong about this but to me the proposition that the younger you marry the more likely you are to divorce seems far from obvious. “
This is, to speak plainly, entirely incorrect. Increased age at marriage dramatically reduces the divorce rate. More generally, the demographic factors associated with being a “bobo wedding”—increased wealth, education, age at marriage, etc.—all lead to a lower chance of divorce. Furthermore, blue states, the natural mating ground of bobo’s have markedly lower overall divorce rates than red states.
The picture for religion is a little more complicated, and really depends on how you define “traditional” religion, but I would note that conservative Christians as a whole, especially evangelicals, have higher divorce rates. Atheists and agnostics, on the other hand, have low divorce rates, although I suspect this is due to correlation with intelligence and socioeconomic class.
I understand how you could have the perception you do, but you need to update your stereotype intuitions—they haven’t kept pace with the data.
Also, I really think you are completely missing the relevance of the fact that it is Ann Althouse that Sullivan was insulting. Ann Althouse. She’s cuckoo for cocoapuffs! If it was someone less insanely narcissistic, this would probably be a slightly wierd but still endearing human interest story. But again, it’s Ann Althouse!, so people are justifiably amused by the attention-whoring.
— salacious · Apr 13, 12:32 PM · #
Um… because I’ve read her fucking blog?
Write about themselves. With commenters who show up to read and write about them, too. Ann Althouse marrying a member of her own peanut gallery is just the closing of the oroboros in terms of self-gratifying narcissism.
That’s an uncharacteristic act of “epistemological modesty”, then. What, suddenly the publically-touted personal lives of bloggers is the only thing we can’t talk about on a blog?
I mean, whatever. A crap marriage isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy, so I hope it works out for Ann. But really, come on! Elevating your most obsequious blog commenter to the status of spouse, with all the background research and shared experience you might have if you were choosing a forum moderator, is weird! Maybe it’s just weird enough to work. Maybe it’s too weird to.
But to say it’s not weird at all is to say that all online relationships are equally weird (that is: not very) and that’s just not true at all. Not every meatspace relationship is equally not-weird, either.
— Chet · Apr 13, 01:10 PM · #
Time was, it was considered a beautiful thing to engage in romance via correspondence. If anything, extended periods of living together prior to marriage is the outlier.
— TW Andrews · Apr 13, 01:41 PM · #
salacious: Good points with the data.
Well, that’s ironclad logic if I ever saw it.
Chet:
Well, you can — in fact, I just did —, but just because you can do something doesn’t mean it’s wise or right. Which is my point.
There’s a good point in here. But I’m not sure it makes it wise for strangers to comment publicly and insultingly.
I’m not sure “No comment possible” on Sullivan’s blog means “I think this is ridiculous because I think Althouse is crazy but otherwise I would have no boneheaded bias against blogger-commenter romance and I wish her the best nonetheless.”
— PEG · Apr 13, 02:03 PM · #
So is sticking a penis into a vagina if you’re determined to be all that analytical about it.
— mcg · Apr 13, 02:10 PM · #
I guess if Ann Althouse were sitting right in front of me, I probably wouldn’t say anything to her about it. I’m Minnesotan, after all. But I’m not going to live my life pretending like public figures, who put their lives out there for my interest and attention, are listening in the next room at every moment.
Historically untrue.
— Chet · Apr 13, 05:24 PM · #
The statistics show that marriage prior to 19 offers progressively higher future divorce rates as age decreases. Marriage after the age of 26(men) and 23(women) show no improvement in outcomes as age increases.
As far as online dating goes, I’m a little surprised to not see typical conservative criticisms. In particular, online dating tends to disrespect the proper order of place in one’s life, often asking one party to move a significant distance from their community and loved ones. I have dated online, and I believe the experience was an impediment to me forming real relationships.
Signed,
Married at 21 for 9 years as of next month.
— Badger · Apr 13, 05:46 PM · #
cw said: “There is a lot of hyperbole about Sullivan here. He is who he is, an excitable and sometimes pretty dense (In the early days after 9/11 he wanted to call war friendly young people “Eagles”). But he address lots of important issues, takes stands, and will admit if he was wrong. He also publishes regular substantive dissents. He has made a visible commitment to intellectual honesty.”
I disagree, Sullivan is the living embodiment of intellectual dishonesty. The fact that he sometimes posts dissents and occasionally admits errors (maybe once out of every ten errors that is pointed out to him, if that), in an attempt to falsely portray himself as fair, only makes him even more dishonest. His political commentary is reliably just blatant, one-sided propaganda, replete with cherry-picked data, glaring double standards, straw man arguments, etc. That is, not much different from what you would find on Kos, except that at least Kos doesn’t try to hide his bias.
— Jon · Apr 13, 06:06 PM · #
To be shorter, what’s so fucking weird about it is that it’s a relationship based only on an interest both Ann Althouse and her fiance share: Ann Althouse.
Not to be as blunt as you, but how the fuck do you know?Um… because I’ve read her fucking blog?
That’s fucking retarded. They met through her blog—that doesn’t mean that their entire relationship is based on an interest in her blog. That’s like saying that two people who meet at a bar have a relationship only based on an interest in liquor. Seriously, have you thought this through? Have you considered the possibility that these are actual people who have interests and communications outside of a website?
— JTHC75 · Apr 13, 06:35 PM · #
“To be shorter, what’s so fucking weird about it is that it’s a relationship based only on an interest both Ann Althouse and her fiance share: Ann Althouse.
Not to be as blunt as you, but how the fuck do you know?
Um… because I’ve read her fucking blog?”
What else are relationships built on, but interests in common? If they met in a bar, or at work, or through friends, wouldn’t they discuss interests in common, and build from there? It is in a way more real, because you remove the physical aspects of attraction , which can initially muddy things up. Build a friendship, and then test the physical.
In any case, why be so gratuitously nasty? Just wish them well, and move on.
— CS · Apr 13, 07:32 PM · #
I disagree, Sullivan is the living embodiment of intellectual dishonesty. The fact that he sometimes posts dissents and occasionally admits errors (maybe once out of every ten errors that is pointed out to him, if that), in an attempt to falsely portray himself as fair, only makes him even more dishonest. His political commentary is reliably just blatant, one-sided propaganda, replete with cherry-picked data, glaring double standards, straw man arguments, etc. That is, not much different from what you would find on Kos, except that at least Kos doesn’t try to hide his bias.
Umm….Jon? Could I have some empirical data please?
Here is my personal favorite example of cherry picked data…..Douthat and Ponnuru cite the Hamilton poll to prove that the youth demographic is 70% against personally having an abortion, while FAILING TO MENTION that the same respondents are 60% against striking down Roe.
— matoko_chan · Apr 13, 09:06 PM · #
If two people not only met in a bar, but for the next several years only met in bars, and when they did meet only talked about what they liked to drink, then yes, I would say that they had a relationship based only on their mutual interest in liquor.
The sole subject of Ann Althouse’s blog is Ann Althouse. The two of them decided to meet in person after years of talking about her on her blog. That’s some sick stuff. Celebrities shouldn’t marry the presidents of their fan clubs. Isn’t that in the Bible somewhere?
— Chet · Apr 13, 10:50 PM · #
i think i agree with those who say that this is andrew’s comment about ann althouse specifically — it’s not some statement about internet love at large.
see his follow-up:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/the-althouse-timeline.html
all told, he didn’t really say much in that first post, the equivalent of raised eyebrows and a snicker. and i think considering he’s had a husband for some years now, but it’s a marriage that’s not even acknowledged to be legally legitimate by most of the country, he has a right to lift his brows at the idea of two people getting married after knowing each other in person for only a fraction of the time he’s spent in a loving and monogamous relationship with his husband. i’m just saying — if we are defending ann’s right to get married to someone she’s spent less than a month with in person (and i do defend that right), then let’s say it’s fine for two adult males who have been in a loving relationship for YEARS to be married, too.
— midge · Apr 14, 04:59 AM · #
midge: Well, I don’t read Sullivan, so I don’t have an opinion on whether he is generally intellectually honest or dishonest, but I certainly find this blog post dishonest.
My problem with Sullivan’s post (and others’) wasn’t that I thought he was against civil marriage rights for bloggers and commenters, to say the least. And he knows it. The problem is that he commented mockingly and mean-spiritedly.
He wrote that earlier post because (a) he doesn’t like Althouse personally, which I can understand (but still doesn’t make it very advisable) OR (b) he has a problem with blogger-commenter romances and/or online romances and/or people who git hitched after a relatively short time, in which case I think he’s just flat-out boneheaded wrong. (Or ( c) he just wasn’t thinking at the time he posted it, which given the medium that is blog, is perfectly understandable.)
But he doesn’t address that, he just makes an argument about something totally unrelated that nobody accused him of.
And this is very much a non sequitur:
I have real and sincere sympathy for Sullivan’s inability to enter a legally sanctioned same-sex marriage. However I’m not sure how that gives him any particular license to heap snark on other people’s legally sanctioned marriages.
— PEG · Apr 14, 08:05 AM · #
For my own part I grant those unfairly forced to be outside looking in considerable latitude in regards to their own reactions to watching others conspicuously enjoy the benefits they’re barred from. Althouse, after all, didn’t simply toss out a “hey, gettin’ hitched” aside; she made it the subject of a days-long reveal on her blog, like an old diamond commercial. All that was missing was a Vivaldi soundtrack and the tagline “he went to Jared!” (I guess I’m mixing my ad campaigns, here.)
I don’t see why we’re all required to respond to that kind of self-magnification with elation.
— Chet · Apr 14, 03:29 PM · #
Fine. Then respond with indifference. But hostility remains unwarranted in my view.
— PEG · Apr 17, 10:45 AM · #
P.S. If you think Althouse’s problem is attention-seeking, then indifference is DEFINITELY the way to go vs. snark.
— PEG · Apr 17, 10:46 AM · #