Laughing At My Online Mob
Plus more thoughts on retail theft
Last week’s post about retail theft generated more than 1,100 views—by far the most for a Cornerstone piece not promoted by a big-name blogger—plus a lot of interesting discussion. I will share reflections at the end of this piece. Greetings to this past week’s 30 new subscribers.
Do not automatically fear an online mob. The Saturday before last, I sent the tweet pictured above, which eventually hit 1,000,000 views, with mostly negative reaction. That Sunday, I realized it had gone viral and found myself laughing uncontrollably with a dear friend on the rooftop of his high-rise apartment building as he read the most offensive insults and extreme screeds he could find. It was cathartic.
I should note that Monday I did find myself feeling blue, for a few different reasons including, probably, knowing that roughly a thousand people were mocking me. From an evolutionary psychology standpoint, I suspect our brain reads that as, “A group of people wants to hurt me.” On Tuesday I felt better. I remain mostly Zen about it. But the human psyche is simply not meant to handle that sort of thing.
My friend fully convinced me to write about the experience when he said that a person can choose not to give an online mob power over them. If my family or I were being threatened, which we were not, things would be different. There are still minor caveats. People have commented on my “physiognomy,” just like the progressive-era eugenicists they would claim to despise. My only real concern would be getting doxed.
A representative reaction was: “These people don't believe people should be free to pursue life styles they disagree with. They want it to be illegal or taxed to try to pursue it in any such way.”
I wholeheartedly agree that folks should be able to live in whatever kind of housing or community they want to. Right now the biggest limitation on that freedom is heavy regulation of dense housing in places with jobs and opportunity. The episode brings to mind an Aaron Sorkin quote introduced to me by
’s Substack, along the lines of: Getting bad publicity is like being seasick — you feel like you’re dying and everyone else just thinks it’s funny. People were so upset and aggressive and off-target in their rage that I found it funny too.Finding it funny myself does not make me moral or wise. Experience with NIMBYs being angry at me helped. Younger me definitely would have freaked out and maybe started arguing with people replying to my tweet. I guess my explanation is that I know these people are unlikely to hurt me professionally or personally. They certainly do not know me. Seemingly most of the haters are putting words in my mouth, unsurprisingly. A good critique is that most of the land in red is federally owned. Even still, the contrast of how many people can live on such a small or large amount of land is so striking, I think it made some people defensive, causing them to instinctually lash out. Never mind that I dream of one day wandering around the Mountain West!
The saddest thing about online rage is that people jump to totally false assumptions and stereotypes. Of course food is grown in rural areas. My wife’s uncle lives on the farm he and his siblings grew up on, in rural Ohio. Some folks are calling me a communist. A few are calling me gay. Welcome to the internet!
A point I do consider worth fact-checking is that Northern Virginia, where I live, is extremely safe. To quote myself, NoVA might be the safest region in the whole country, based on this Bloomberg analysis of crime and external-cause mortality data. That June 2022 article examined the fact that New York City is quite a bit safer on a per capita basis than other large U.S. cities and, notably, many rural areas. Despite a recent rise in subway crime, as far as I know, NYC remains quite safe.
Surprise is an important element of humor. And I was surprised that my Twitter account, which I am sure has been (like many or most others) throttled to receive less engagement some time after Elon Musk made the site pay-to-play, produced a viral tweet. The key ingredient was rage. People are outraged that I would suggest, in their mind, that more people or people in rural areas should live in dense housing.
Before my account was throttled, I had a tweet viewed by almost a million people in which I condemned a flyer from a group organizing against the expansion of a daycare. I basically said that toddlers are not nuclear waste, but also that we should not demonize NIMBYs, just work to defeat them. Some folks retorted that we should demonize others. I knew I was playing with fire when I wrote the tweet.
My feelings about social media are complicated. The engagement I have received on Twitter, mostly because I got into urbanism, has been generally positive (partially because I freely block nasty accounts). It is still an excellent networking tool. I am honestly glad I stopped being able to reliably create tweets that would get 10,000 views. I have spent far less time on the site, no longer chasing the dopamine hit. I ultimately think social media is a reflection of ourselves, yet I still see that it brings out the worst in people. We live in a society, as the Internet meme goes, and many of its problems appear to be social, on the level of individuals’ social lives or lack thereof. A lot of research about these problems, and the foundations of a good life, boil down to simple advice: Spend time with friends, spend time outside moving your body.
My favorite thing about dense housing is that it helps people find community and a sense of belonging. And have I mentioned the environmental benefits?
The only negative feedback I got on my piece about our local CVS is that the police should help deter theft, especially when it has become a chronic problem, and enforce property rights. The city council member I mentioned has shared my concerns with our city’s police chief, which I appreciate. There has been a national increase of such property crime, driven by organized retail theft, the chief noted in an email, though the CVS employee said that kids making trouble after school is a big issue at her store.
A few commenters, including friends I hosted over the weekend, affirmed that bad behavior snowballs if there are no consequences for it. One of my friends used to teach at a middle school. (This same friend explained to me, quite rightly, that people who live in rural areas do not like the implication that their lifestyle is bad, for the environment or in general.) Students who had sex in a bathroom would be suspended for only one day. Expulsion was extremely rare, even for kids who brutally assaulted their fellow students. Bear in mind, the typical age range for middle school is 11 to 14.
The other piece I wrote that received such positive reader feedback was about tension in the YIMBY movement. In that instance as well, I felt apprehension questioning what felt like progressive orthodoxy with pragmatism and, arguably, common sense. This suggests to me that the average person, or maybe just the average YIMBY or average reader of this blog, even if they are progressive, is frustrated by the lack of substance in polarized discourse and has a restless desire to solve real-world problems.
Thanks to my 391 subscribers, especially my 11 paid subscribers. If you enjoy this blog or want to work together, especially on my concept for a real estate financing platform, please contact lucagattonicelli@substack.com. Check out YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, the grassroots pro-housing organization I founded.