• edwardligma [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    who gets to decide what “serious” and “scholarly” work is?

    me. i do.

    maybe its all impeccably and even-handedly sourced, i dunno. but when someones on a rant but also wanting me to trust a bunch of historical statistics theyre throwing out im gonna be suspicious of their sourcing and whether theyve made a serious attempt to engage with all the relevant historical evidence to build the most accurate picture or whether theyve picked the most extreme numbers they could find that best suited their case and maybe massaged the context to give a more extreme implication from them to boot. so im gonna go spend my theory-reading time reading something else instead cos theres unlimited theory to read and i have limited time and im not gonna spend it reading stuff that gives me untrustworthy vibes

      • edwardligma [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        yep exactly, it triggered my bullshit detector and he absolutely didnt convince me that he had done the research to properly lay the groundwork for his assertions at the start, so i decided it was a more productive use of my time to read something else instead, i dont think thats an unreasonable thing to do at all. and that something else at the time happened to be fanon, which did not trigger my bullshit detector (despite also not being written in a conventional western academic style)

        is my detector faulty? maybe, but theres a million bits of theory to read so im gonna read the ones that seem like theyve done their homework instead. i havent read all the theory and neither has anyone else, we all have to make judgements on which theory is worth our time. im making no judgements on the concepts in it cos i didnt even get that far, im saying "he did a shit job of convincing me it was worth reading further instead of reading something else"