June 3, 2023

"Streisand effect" is what I said when I saw these 2 stories featured at Memeorandum this morning.

Here:

 

And I now see it's what Elon Musk was saying last night:
I watched the video yesterday, and I'm laughing at "the vicious and intellectually dull Matt Walsh." Walsh is using a style of deadpan interviewing that disarms interviewees because they might assume he's intellectually dull, but that's not an intellectually dull thing to do. It's intellectually dull to think it's intellectually dull.

The battle at Twitter over the “What Is A Woman?” video began early Thursday morning with a complaint from Jeremy Boreing, CEO of The Daily Wire, who said the video was being suppressed. He also said Twitter had canceled a distribution deal with the outlet because the video featured two instances of misgendering trans people.... 
Misgendering trans people had been restricted on the platform since 2018, but under Musk the company quietly repealed that rule....
“This was a mistake by many people at Twitter,” Musk tweeted... “It is definitely allowed. Whether or not you agree with using someone’s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws.”...
After Musk allowed it to be posted, Twitter users were still unable to share the film or comment on it, limiting its spread.... Hedging his support for the video, Musk tweeted at 8:57 p.m. ET Thursday that the video was “sensitive content” and that Twitter would not actively recommend it to people....  By early Friday, Musk relented and made the video shareable. 
“Works now. Only limit is that it will not be placed next to advertising,” Musk tweeted at 8:28 a.m. ET to conservative pundit Matt Walsh, who stars in the video and has gained wide attention for his videos targeting trans people and drag queens. 
Three minutes earlier, at 8:25 a.m., Musk himself tweeted out the film, adding, “Every parent should watch this.” The film was pinned to the top of Musk’s profile on Friday afternoon. By Friday late afternoon, the video had gotten more than 62 million views, according to the tally on Twitter....

65 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

I made a new tag for "Streisand effect" and applied it retrospectively.

farmgirl said...

If *no one knows”* the definition of a woman- isn’t it phobic against women?

*As opposed to, you know- being honest?

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

120.5M Views

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Machiavellian Musk led a horse to water and made the horse drink.

It helped that the horse never takes its blinders off.

Dave Begley said...

Matt Walsh is a first-rate intellect.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

what is a woman?

A person with xx chromosomes.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

watching it - it's pretty tame. It's just Matt Walsh interviewing people.

oh no - THOUGHT CRIME... MIND CRIME!

Kevin said...

A conservative pressure movement built against Twitter's CEO, resulting in high-level departures from the company

I see. Musk didn't do this out of principle, but because he was forced to do so by the mob.

Therefore, people who left did so out of principle because they are the true heroes in this story.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

It’s all good news except for the false “anti-trans” headline. Biggest promotion ever if you count Musk’s 141,000 followers on Twitter. Good riddance yet more people from the Orwellian Trust and Safety council, which was untrustworthy and unsafe.

cassandra lite said...

We live in the era of "It's intellectually dull to think it's intellectually dull." At least in my lifetime (about the same age as AA) have so many missed so many jokes on themselves. Irony is a terrible thing to waste.

Birches said...

I watched yesterday too and was shocked at how effective the documentary is. I assumed that Matt Walsh would lecture for 90 minutes. However, letting people speak and hang themselves was smart. He interviewed the African tribe the exact same way he interviewed the Americans. And they all laughed at him. That was effective.

By the time he got on his soapbox for Loudoun County and Dr. Phil, I was on board.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Re: Streisand Effect. Her name is apt because her compatriots in the progressive cluster of rich ignorant old white people who use their privilege to shut up or attempt to shut up the people they look down on are responsible for this same bullshit coast to coast. It used to be a joke that bad parents would say, or demonstrate in the worst cases, “do as I say not as I do.” And that is what ties this post thematically to the other one about YouTube. Their attempt to wall off 2020 as somehow beyond discussion only served to keep the public’s interest. Polls consistently show the American people want voter ID and secure elections and the public believes the Media are intentionally deceptive.

Because they are. Ditto social media companies. Ditto politicians in general. Etc.

Dude1394 said...

Musk's response to this is picture perfect. Within a day, the person responsible for the limiting of the movie was gone. Unlike the Bud Light marketeer that took weeks to go on "leave".

Michael K said...

Glad to see the departures.

Tank said...

Literally just watched the film. Walsh's style is the opposite of cross examination. He asks open questions which many of the so-called experts should have a ready answer for. They don't. Contrary to the usual rules of cross examination, I occasionally used open questions (as a lawyer) which can be devastating, as they are in this case.

MayBee said...

"Misgendering people", "dead names" and "gender-affirming surgery" are the tells that the trans movement is not about finding the right way to care for people who feel they are trans. The fact that people can be fired or quit their jobs for not falling into line about those words is what makes me wonder where all the pressure and power is actually coming from.

I'm glad Musk made the film possible to watch on Twitter. It shouldn't be something considered too dangerous to see. It's very mild, and yes, the Streisand effect was strong on this.

Sebastian said...

If asking what is a woman is now "transphobic," it goes to show that trans claims are inherently phony, since presumably male-to-female transitioners would want to know what their future womanhood actually is.

I've only watched parts of the movie so far, but the basic prog answer to the key question appears to be: whatever you say--i.e., something completely subjective-political. Exposing that discursive insanity is not just "anti-trans" but anti-prog. Hence the intense attacks.

Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...

"Targeting."

Did anyone pounce? Or was there just targeting?

Mason G said...

"I watched the video yesterday, and I'm laughing at "the vicious and intellectually dull Matt Walsh." Walsh is using a style of deadpan interviewing that disarms interviewees because they might assume he's intellectually dull, but that's not an intellectually dull thing to do. It's intellectually dull to think it's intellectually dull."

Do you think he's being called "vicious and intellectually dull" because of his interviewing style? Or maybe it's something else...

"conservative pundit Matt Walsh, who stars in the video and has gained wide attention for his videos targeting trans people and drag queens"

Pianoman said...

Scott Adams thinks we have reached "peak Woke", because it's now possible to question Woke ideology without being immediately cancelled. I think the success of the film is evidence that Adams is correct. There's no way this would have happened a year ago.

It will definitely change hearts and minds, and harden the resolve of people who were already in agreement with Walsh ... which is why the censors were so dead set on stopping it from being shown.

Do Rumble next, Matt. Who knows, maybe we'll see it on YouTube in our lifetime.

MikeD said...

Perhaps that "descriptor" should be applied to Governor DeSantis's announcement as well?

Michael K said...

A post at Powerline reports that some of the studies that supported the suicide argument for surgery on these k,ids have been retracted.

A major correction has been issued by the American Journal of Psychiatry. The authors and editors of an October 2019 study, titled “Reduction in mental health treatment utilization among transgender individuals after gender-affirming surgeries: a total population study,” have retracted its primary conclusion. Letters to the editor by twelve authors, including ourselves, led to a reanalysis of the data and a corrected conclusion stating that in fact the data showed no improvement after surgical treatment.

In fact, a Swedish study reported that The Dhejne team made extensive use of numerous, specified Swedish registries and examined data from 324 patients in Sweden over thirty years who underwent sex reassignment. They used population controls matched by birth year, birth sex, and reassigned sex. When followed out beyond ten years, the sex-reassigned group had nineteen times the rate of completed suicides and nearly three times the rate of all-cause mortality and inpatient psychiatric care, compared to the general population.

Tina Trent said...

I watched it. Watch it.

The gods must be crazy.

And could we please get off at lease one slippery slope and stop using the slur "c**-gender"?

Relatedly, several women have been murdered in a small area around Portland, but because they're just women, their murders aren't being investigated as hate crimes; the investigation will not receive the same resources as hate crime investigations; the national media is ignoring the killings for now, and if or when a serial killer or killers of women are caught for these murders, the serial killer or killers will face lesser sentencing because he or she or they chose to target ... "just women."

Activism has consequences.

Smilin' Jack said...

“It’s the movie they really don’t want you to see: #WhatIsAWoman?”

As far as I’m concerned, “they” win. I already know the answer, and besides, I’m busy catching up on the new Beavis and Butthead.

rcocean said...

"Chaos at Twitter" at made me laugh. How could they tell?

Lucien said...

Well, now you’ve made me go and find out that “retrospectively” and “retroactively” ,are, indeed, used synonymously.

Lucien said...

The action against the film was likely taken by the “Deep Twit”, who enforce Woke rules no matter who owns the company.
Similarly, the Capitol police officers who stopped the children’s choir from singing the national anthem must think they still work for Pelosi. Can McCarthy fire them?

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

From the video:

"I think when a person tells you who they are, you should believe them."

This is what gullibility actually looks like.

alanc709 said...

I notice NBC lied in its teaser about the "What is a Woman" video. I'd expect nothing less from them.

0_0 said...

I thank New Republic for telling me how to feel. Facts are not important.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

NBC is full-on +Mob/Democrat party crap outlet.

gadfly said...

Wiki defines the Streisand Effect as "an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where it instead leads to increased awareness of that information."

According to Nicki Swift, there is a shady side to Streisand:

"The Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of a diva is either "a famous female singer of popular music" or "a self-important person who is temperamental and difficult to please." With 150 million record sales, 11 Billboard chart-topping albums, and 46 Grammy nominations to her name, Barbra Streisand certainly fits the former. And according to many who have had the pleasure, or perhaps the misfortune, of working with her, the "Yentl" star fits the latter down to a tee, too."

She fights with everyone on her crew and imposes demands on facility employees working where she does shows. She even bit a co-star in the neck onstage. And at every turn, she offers criticisms of all things Republican and Trumpian. And her anti-GOP stance is, of course, why Elon Musk borrowed the inappropriate Streisand Effect name.

mikee said...

I believe that we just hit peak trans. From here on in, the main issue will turn to who gets the government grants: him, her, xhe or them.

Larry J said...

“Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker said...
what is a woman?

A person with xx chromosomes.”

Not exactly. A person with two X chromosomes is a female. An infant female is not a woman. She will become one in time but she’s isn’t a woman yet. Simply put, the definition of a woman is an “adult female human being”. Before the current insanity became normalized, there was no argument about that definition. Where rational and sane thought prevails, there still isn’t.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Asking questions.
That bastard!
The left hate that. The left use pre-approved narratives and washed-clean half-truths, leading questions... peppered with fake-morals and virtue signalling and underpinned with their trademark Beharian lies, hate & propaganda.

Gahrie said...

Can McCarthy fire them?

Probably not. Union protections. But he should be able to, and he should fire the three highest ranking officials he can fire instead pour encourager les autres.

Tomcc said...

I probably shouldn't be but am stunned by the number of educated people who simply don't believe that there is an objective reality. "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

NBC/Maddow/Hillary/Schitt Rule:

Thou shalt not be rude to the protected class: Leftists.

Leftists shall be rude to you.

cubanbob said...

I don't use Twitter so I have not watched the film. That said, would the hysterical reaction from the progs be any different if the film was about "What is a man?" If not, then it would seem this trans "movement" is largely misogynist.

Greg the Class Traitor said...

The battle at Twitter over the “What Is A Woman?” video began early Thursday morning with a complaint from Jeremy Boreing, CEO of The Daily Wire, who said the video was being suppressed.

There's the fraudulent worldview of the Left in a nutshell

No, the "battle at Twitter" didn't begin when nazis at Twitter decided to censor "What is a Woman", the "battle" only "began" when those mean right wingers objected to the left wing fascists censoring them.

Because the Left forcing their desires on the rest of us is "the natural state of the world", and is never the cause of any bad thing

Greg the Class Traitor said...

Free Manure While You Wait! said...
From the video:

"I think when a person tells you who they are, you should believe them."

This is what gullibility actually looks like.


Not when done by an intelligent person, who only follows that rule when the "telling" is an "admission against interest".

If you tell me you are a liar, an imbecile, a lunatic, a fascists, or a totalitarian scum bag, I'm going to believe you

dbp said...

I marveled at the patience of Matt Walsh. To passively sit and listen to those lunatics, without showing any kind of discomfort, that takes something I don't have and few people have.

It's sort of a mirror image of what Sacha Baron Cohen does with Ali G and Borat. In SBC's case, he acts like the lunatic and his straight subjects hilariously try to keep their cool.

John henry said...

I just watched the movie and thought it excellent.

Only nitpick is that I thought they should have been a bit more explicit about the lopsided number of f to m transitions relative to m to f. It's about 70% girls transitioning to men.

I think the general public perception is the reverse.

John LGKTQ Henry

Prairie Wrench said...

If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does it have?
Four, because calling a tail a leg does not make it so.
-Abraham Lincoln (supposedly)

Breezy said...

Brilliant movie.

Scariest part to me was the women in the women’s march not being able to answer the question. We’re in deep s*t.

n.n said...

It's about 70% girls transitioning to men

From penis envy to the tragedy of common fallacies. Why compete with the man, when you can legally simulate one. Others libel the man with a dream of unrequited rape and a hope of redistributive change. Others blame the man for impregnating a "burden" unto... into them. A process of divergence, of aborting a "burden" as a metaphor for reproductive rites in a born again state.

Jamie said...

the inappropriate Streisand Effect name.

How was it inappropriate? Someone at Twitter was trying to restrict access to this movie. Doing so drew greater attention to it.

n.n said...

A woman, no, a feminist is adorned with a pussy hat. And, to paraphrase the modern psychosis... psychiatric confession... profession, a man is gifted with the phallic... fill in the blank... object of their envy. It's not a progressive scale, and most women distinguish between a masculinist and a man, and most men distinguish between a feminist and a woman. The liberal tropes of Earth, Venus, Mars, and Uranus are still useful in characterizing the binary division... when Uranus attacks Venus. Ha.

Jamie said...

what is a woman?

A person with xx chromosomes.”

Not exactly. A person with two X chromosomes is a female. An infant female is not a woman. She will become one in time but she’s isn’t a woman yet.


One of my favorite Doonesbury strips was - I have forgotten all character names and who was with whom and all but - when one character had a baby girl, and the young daughter of this (married, because it was a different time) woman exclaimed, "It's a baby woman!"

I loved that.

n.n said...

The trans/neos, socials, sims are a splinter faction on Uranus in a civil war, with Earth, Venus, and Mars caught in the crossfire. Throw another baby... fetal-baby on the barbie, it's over, right?

Quaestor said...

It's 9 Thermidor, citizens, and Robespierre has just shot herself in the mouth.

Quaestor said...

It's 9 Thermidor, citizens, and Robespierre has just shot herself in the mouth.

walter said...

Just when "lone justice" had broken from his visions of Altbillies masturbating to bigotry, you go and bring this up.
For shame...

Crazy World said...

Elon is a genius and Matt Walsh is too and also entertaining

rwnutjob said...

Elon really was concerned about pronouns. He's not completely there yet. He just relented & realized he needs to be more pro free speech.

GRW3 said...

I suspect intent between Musk and Walsh. A topic too alarming for the embedded progressive loons to ignore, each step ratcheted up to get a deeper level.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

gadfly,

What Jamie said. There is nothing "inappropriate" about Musk labeling this an instance of the Streisand Effect. (Which is 20 years old, now.) This is the textbook definition. Pissy person(s) want something not to be seen; the very effort to shut down the others' seeing it massively increases the number of people who have even heard of it.

I have seen this movie also, btw, and I think it's pretty damn brilliant. Walsh just lets his interlocutors talk; that's literally all there is here. Walsh puts no words in anyone's mouth. If what comes out nonetheless sounds a mite . . . brain-impaired, the blame goes to them, not to Walsh.

I wish only that he'd brought up Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech.

Greg the Class Traitor said...

gadfly said...
And her anti-GOP stance is, of course, why Elon Musk borrowed the inappropriate Streisand Effect name.

Oh, gadfly, you actually had a coherent analogical post that was relevant to the topic

Then you had to be you, and throw that in.

The "Streisand Effect name" is what all functional people online use to describe someone trying to suppress something online, and having it backfire.

Which makes this an entirely correct use of the term, given that it was online, some nasty fascists tried to suppress it, and it backfired

Mason G said...

"Walsh just lets his interlocutors talk; that's literally all there is here. Walsh puts no words in anyone's mouth. If what comes out nonetheless sounds a mite . . . brain-impaired, the blame goes to them, not to Walsh."

This is where the opposition to the movie comes from. The best they can come up with is "the vicious and intellectually dull Matt Walsh" when Matt Walsh is not the topic and makes every effort to avoid becoming the topic.

Rocco said...

Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...
"Targeting. Did anyone pounce? Or was there just [T]argeting?"

If there was Targeting, did it involve tuck-friendly swimsuits?

Lee Moore said...

I also recommend “Hjernevask” (brainwash) by the Norwegian comedian and sociologist Harald Elia, which came out in 2010. If you can still find it. It explores “blank slate” gender ideology, contrasting it with evolutionary biology in a relaxed self deprecatory manner, and like Walsh’s film, leaves the crazies to dig their own graves.
Interestingly although it’s from Scandinavia, the grand Central Station of Sex/ gender egalitarianism, Eia did not experience a ton of hate for making this.

Rusty said...

" Meet me halfway, ladies. Lose the dicks."

Bruce Hayden said...

I fully expect that the judge will eagerly commit reversible error, to get a conviction. She is reputedly the worst judge in DC for the J6 defendants. She seems totally disinterested that the Biden/Garland DOJ intentionally suppressed stacks of exonerating evidence. In this case, the prosecution needs to prove state of mind, and evidence of election fraud goes directly to whether it was reasonable for Trump to have believed that he lost because of it. Absent proof of that, the prosecution doesn’t have the “knowingly” intent requirement for each of the charges.

And, of course, he believed that he lost through election fraud. Many of us do too. The evidence is overwhelming that there was significant fraud and irregularities during the 2020 election, esp in those 5 critical states. In Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, etc, the political machine shut down counting with Trump safely ahead, threw Republican poll watchers out, then started hauling in boxes and boxes of almost assuredly illegal ballots in, counted them, and, by magic, almost all of the votes counted after that were for FJB. There is video of Dems bringing into the counting room thousands of ballots that hadn’t gone through the normal validation process, as well as running the same ballots through several times. We’ve seen the video. So has Trump.

So, what happens? My projection is that Trump hammers this. 4 BS indictments by Dem prosecutors in the year before the election. What does that look like? For many of Trump’s supporters, it looks like hyper partisan use of criminal prosecutions for partisan advantage (of course, that’s what the entire J6 prosecutions are about too). GOPe would like Trump to just shut up about those hyper political prosecutions. Trump won’t. They are going to be the center point of every Trump rally up through the election. He may repeatedly say something like “4 BS indictments filed by hyper partisan prosecutors to deprive him of being elected, and the hack judge sending peaceful protesters to prison for years for walking peacefully through Congress on 1/6 is doing the same here, not allowing him to prove that there was indeed election fraud”. Etc. Those supporting Trump will be climbing over broken glass to right the wrong to him, and us, in 2020.

Bruce Hayden said...

I fully expect that the judge will eagerly commit reversible error, to get a conviction. She is reputedly the worst judge in DC for the J6 defendants. She seems totally disinterested that the Biden/Garland DOJ intentionally suppressed stacks of exonerating evidence. In this case, the prosecution needs to prove state of mind, and evidence of election fraud goes directly to whether it was reasonable for Trump to have believed that he lost because of it. Absent proof of that, the prosecution doesn’t have the “knowingly” intent requirement for each of the charges.

And, of course, he believed that he lost through election fraud. Many of us do too. The evidence is overwhelming that there was significant fraud and irregularities during the 2020 election, esp in those 5 critical states. In Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, etc, the political machine shut down counting with Trump safely ahead, threw Republican poll watchers out, then started hauling in boxes and boxes of almost assuredly illegal ballots in, counted them, and, by magic, almost all of the votes counted after that were for FJB. There is video of Dems bringing into the counting room thousands of ballots that hadn’t gone through the normal validation process, as well as running the same ballots through several times. We’ve seen the video. So has Trump.

So, what happens? My projection is that Trump hammers this. 4 BS indictments by Dem prosecutors in the year before the election. What does that look like? For many of Trump’s supporters, it looks like hyper partisan use of criminal prosecutions for partisan advantage (of course, that’s what the entire J6 prosecutions are about too). GOPe would like Trump to just shut up about those hyper political prosecutions. Trump won’t. They are going to be the center point of every Trump rally up through the election. He may repeatedly say something like “4 BS indictments filed by hyper partisan prosecutors to deprive him of being elected, and the hack judge sending peaceful protesters to prison for years for walking peacefully through Congress on 1/6 is doing the same here, not allowing him to prove that there was indeed election fraud”. Etc. Those supporting Trump will be climbing over broken glass to right the wrong to him, and us, in 2020.