Ouch. Thinking about this, the guy brought it on himself, but he's probably applying for jobs, and to have this showing up on his Google searches may be a disproportionate punishment.
I meant to write Tom Hilde, but given his verbosity and pedantry Tome might be appropriate.
Matt, we probably won't be so high in the results next year.
Start date is probably November, if he's looking for jobs for next academic year. That's when hiring departments start reading applications.
Not that I'm saying you should de-Google him or anything.
Start date is probably November
That's unfortunate for him.
Well, I don't know if everyone really does Google applicants. I'll hardly have the time.
Well, can't we anticipate that possibility in this text? You, application Googler—sure, some of us think Tom Hilde is a douchebag. But you should know that John Emerson is like this close to joining Hilde in the war against Yglesias.
Matt, do you think it unfair that, given the level of critical thinking Tom Hilde has displayed, one perhaps might consider it a moral obligation to let departments know what caliber of mind they are considering hiring?
It was kind of a gut reaction, "there but for the Grace of God...." I've taken part in e-mail exchanges that I wouldn't necessarily want hiring committees reading (and I spent a lot of the last four years sitting around worrying about the people off in distant rooms deciding my fate). So the operative word is "ouch" rather than any real wish to help the guy out.
I'd also say that the mental caliber Hilde displayed is not so much the problem--stubbornly defending ridiculous positions would be an occupational hazard of philosophers, if it were not their occupation.
How about his terrible mischaracterization of all who opposed him?
Anyway, probably the only important thing as per him getting hired will be whether he publishes, right? Not how he conducts himself arguing with others.
The contrition is sweet, but the guy did complain--under his full name--at the most widely trafficked academic blog about his poor treatment at a blog CT links to. I wouldn't exactly blame Ogged if a google search shows that this guy wasn't always circumspect. Maybe a search committee member will follow all the links, as I just did, once again, and then, well, they'll get a pretty clear sense of the guy's internet decorum.
(About 3 years ago I was a voting, grad-student member of a search committee, and I didn't think of googling candidates' names. Today, I totally would. Has society changed, or do I just really not want to write my dissertation?)
Just got caught up on this, unwinding after my seminar. (Teaching week?... Over!)
Yikes!!
This blog is scary. Reactive attitudes are not for the fainthearted.
But then it is fascinating to see someone so horrifically misjudge an interpersonal context. Seeing someone get it so wrong makes the ability to get it less wrong seem beautiful, strange, and unearned.
Hey, now my academic prospects are ruined too.
Recriminations and fingerpointing are certainly not an appropriate response to this perhaps-senseless vendetta against an arguably fine young man such as Matt.
Instead, you should manifest your superiority by silently ignoring the unpleasantness, a sovereign disdain etched on your urban-elite countenances.
While Hilde's initial comment was probably the result of horribly misjudging the context, I don't think we can write off his subsequent comments, with their slippery mendacity, as the same. And his carrying on at Crooked Timber put him squarely in bizarro world. So I'm not sure that getting it less wrong is really so accidental; Hilde's distinctive persistent wrongness isn't most people's default way of being.
What's so great about this -- and it is so, so great -- is that, as much as Hilde deserves this treatment, there's no way he won't see it as further confirmation of his initial take on this blog. So, say, this does ruin his career. (It won't, but pretend) The message he'll take from that is: man, don't fuck with the Yglesias fanclub. Those are some crazy bitches!
The only way to truly punish Hilde for mischaracterizing us is to become the very thing he thinks we are. Or something like that.
This blog is scary. Reactive attitudes are not for the fainthearted.
?
pjs, not only do I think you're right, but I like the way you think. When I do posts about how much smarter Yglesias is than Hilde, the joy of it is in making Hilde more sure that he's right, which makes him more wrong. (Soon, no one will be able to tell this faux fanclub cum instrument of torture and amusement from the real thing, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)
(Soon, no one will be able to tell this faux fanclub cum instrument of torture and amusement from the real thing, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)
The question is when my roommate won't be able to discern the fact. I'll tell you when he's intolerable.
I'm not sure that getting it less wrong is really so accidental...
I didn't say it's accidental. I said the ability to avoid such accidents is unearned.
No Strawsonian resentment of Unfogged implied, however.
(I'm not sure whether I'm admiring you for erecting such a pillory or merely marveling at it. Who else but denizens of the Mineshaft could concoct a rival to
this contraption?)
Don't be a total dick, ogged. I think MY swings straight, anyway.
I'm pretty surprised you're taking this position about someone who comes in naked of a pseud.
Are you serious, SCMT? You don't think he's brought this on himself?
I don't know, ogged. If he hasn't done much more than that one thread, you ought to cut him some slack. So he made an ass of himself; so he's an ass. It was a fairly trivial matter, and declaring a jihad against him seems overmuch. At the end of the day, I'm pretty uncomfortable with possible real world consequences for the occasional ill-considered remarks on a blog. Particularly this blog.
So, yeah, I guess I am serious.
It's all fun and games until someone loses a job? But then, what are we supposed to do on these blogs?
I take Tim's point, but we haven't done anything to Hilde other than make his own rantings more prominent on Google. It's not the same kind of "real world consequence" as outing someone, for example. They're his words, and he signed his name to them.
Wait... Nothing at Unfogged about Kal-El Coppola Cage? I'm soooo disappointed.
I was thinking about it, tweedle. I'm not sure if it's funny or sad, though.
It's not the same kind of "real world consequence" as outing someone, for example. They're his words, and he signed his name to them.
Well...
(1) I realize that you have access to information that the rest of us don't, but AFAIK, we only know that someone signed the name "Tom Hilde" to the opinions expressed. Just as someone might sign the name "Ben w-lfs-n" to a series of posts because it sounds like a real name, and no one wants to own that sort of grammatical correction tic.
(2) It strikes me as similar to outing someone, though certainly not as bad. There is a blogging ethic, I think, and it tends to prefer open communication and small consequences. This seems truer of comments than blog posts, I'd argue. To some extent, Hilde might depend on his sense of that ethic. I certainly don't think you have any obligation to hide what he's said, but promoting it seems, somehow, wrong. I think it would be great if he were believed far and wide in the blogging world to be a jackass, and if his comments were known to support that belief; but I like the sense that blogistan is something of a world apart.
Also, you hash certain celebrity names used in posts (or whatever it was), even when those posts are based on public information. I'm not sure I see the difference.
I'm not particularly committed to protecting Hilde (MY in the sunglasses is to DIE for, tho'), but given the competitiveness of the academic market, and the recent indications in the Chronicle that hiring committees use blogged words against potential hires, I'd be uncomfortable making the market potentially harder for Hilde based on such a limited interaction. It's your blog, though, and it isn't as if you're questioning Angelina Jolie's supremacy on any aesthetic scale of physical beauty.
Boy, I'm really torn on this one. Much as I love making fun of Tom Hilde-- almost as much as I love sodomizing M. Yglesias-- I hate to think that I'd be responsible for an ugly outcome. I'm too close to the job market; it softens me up and makes me temper justice with mercy.
Making fun of Eugene Mazo was better, I think.
Damn it. I'll de-googlify his name on the "Still Stinging" post. Not that I'd feel bad if he didn't get a job because of us (though I think that's very unlikely).
You're totally going to hold this against me, aren't you?
Prediction: I share a cab with him at the next APA, and he turns out to be a complete tool (as evidenced by giving the hotel staff or the cabbie a hard time).
I was going to milk Hi/lde for months. I hope he's the one who reports the scent of pot coming from your hotel room.
Ok, so since he was saying those things under his own name, what is it that's wrong with pointing it out? It seems to me it's the difference between giving someone the rope to hang themself and hanging them, except only metaphorically since this is pretty trivial and that would be a very big difference (I assert).
I'm not de-googlifying his comments; I'm just no longer making sure that they're featured so prominently on google, since that's an affirmative step I'd be taking to harm him.
Yeah, 35 is basically my attitude. And 42 seems right as to what is permissible--should was ask the moral philosophers who these folks talked to?
If it's any consolation, his Crooked Timber comments (which IMO are what push him over the line from someone who walked into a party where he didn't know anyone and got into a dumb fight--as per Ted H's 15--to someone you definitely don't want in your faculty meeting--er, as per 17) are still in the top 10, so there's plenty of room for him to be hoist by his own petard.
As always, the question is WWSD? And I think 42 is just about right.
If no fluid is exchanged, it is permitted.
The reason I'm really not inclined to feel any pity for Hilde is that he's a goddamned philosophy professor. Arguments are supposed to be his specialty. I think Hilde's comments were the equivalent of a trucker driving off the grand canyon. I've got no sympathy for a trucker that can't truck, or a philosopher that can't argue.
But hey, maybe Hilde just has some defect that only makes him stupid when talking to people, and that, on his own, he's capable of coming up with some smart stuff. I suppose it's a possibility. Of course, this stuff doesn't lend that theory any credence. It's bad. You know, if an undergrad wrote it, it would be all right. Nothing to write home about, but perhaps it would signify the start of some thinking. But that a professional philosopher who specializes in foreign policy wrote it? Jeesus.
Part of what annoys me about Hilde is that he goes on and on about this and that which isn't pertinent to his point. It's part of being a bad writer, not being able to simply convey his point, but more I think it's just part of loving to listen to himself talk.
I don't think that anyone googling Hilde would really care all that much that he got into a fight on the Internet, tbh. Especially if whoever's googling him has a blog or knows a blogger. But hiring committees are not rational. (Plus, if he's that much of an ass offline, his teaching evals are going to be crap.)
What does Y/glesias say about this?
It might be worth keeping in mind that people approaching the job market and people without long-term positions are prone to a particular kind of insanity that sometimes results in behavior normally thought sufficient for toolhood.
For example, a friend of mine lost many hours arguing about Ayn Rand on the internets. Though he argued in fairly clear and coherent fashion, had I not known him and stumbled on his posts, I would have thought, damn, but this is a guy I don't want in my department, because he's willing to engage in crankery. Not exactly the same thing, but this sort of experience encourages me to view H/ildean outbursts as charitably as possible, at least when it comes to important real-life stuff.
Of course, he's now being viewed as a thing rather than as an agent, but at least that's not a google-able problem.
Long ago, I spent many hours taunting AynRandoids on the internets. So easy to get them to spit and scream. Like all candy-from-a-baby amusements, though, it has a short shelf life.
I know I really would prefer to never have my posts on alt.tasteless circa 1992 ever come to light in a job search situation.
Y'all are now making me curious: what sort of justification does mercy need?
Yeah, Chopper, I'm pretty sure apostropher.com has effectively scuttled any chance I ever had of appointive office.
It shouldn't impede justice?
I mean, I dunno, H/ilde was being a an arrogant, contextually-clueless jackass (that is to say, a douchebag) in a semi-public forum. It seems reasonable to me that he should suffer the internets-equivalent of the loud-talking, abrasive, drunk guy at a party (to wit: a documented King Nutty once he passes out). I would guess that delibrately raising his jackassery's Google profile is probably excessive (even if really, really funny). This was pointed out, ogged relented, problem solved. What more do you want?
Do we want any more? I don't want any more. In fact, I think it's too bad that the wince-reaction of the folks who've dealt with the philosophy job market collides with the really, really funny project of deliberately raising his google profile. At this point I think the discussion is pretty much theoretical.
Incidentally, if your hand slips and you Google Tom Hilfr you still get a bunch of hits in German.
I'll admit I'm unclear on this, but if we're relenting--does google index hyperlinks that lead back to itsel? If so, does leaving the link in the main post intact kinda defeat the purpose of all our slash fiction?
There's also a Tom Hilde who's a geophysicist. I'd feel really bad if the wrong Tom HIlde got in trouble.
I wasn't asking with particular regard for the Hilde thing. I would think that mercy mitigates justice - that the solution is less than just, and that is the point of mercy. But, what with the philosopher-heavy roster of the commentariat, I thought I'd check to see if there was some other understanding.
I've pointedly steered clear of this nose-thumbing affair, but quite aside from philosophical considerations of justice and mercy, it long ago reached the point of unseemliness, IMO.
Let's be dignified and return to Labs' enormous hand-stretched cock and w-lfs-n's biblical familiarity with our mothers.
re 55: I'm wearing Tom Hilfr jeans, right now...
the purpose of all our slash fiction
The philosophy professor appeared in the door and leaned against one side of the frame. He had a three-days' growth of beard, untamed curly locks, and a distinctly maniacal gleam in his eye. What gave him this gleam? He was staring at the deceptively cherubic yet tall young blogger hunched over his computer terminal in the dark, two tiny blue monitors reflected in his spectacles.
The professor scanned the text in the blogger's lens reflections--he was blessed with nearly 80/20 vision--and saw the pretext he needed.
"Young Yglesias!" he snapped, as he strode around the computer desk to stand behind the blogger. "I see you have written 'there' when you clearly meant to say 'their.' I would hate to see the world fail to perceive your analytical gifts because of such a foolish error." Professor Hilde's sneer suggested he remained unconvinced of the blogger's analytical gifts. "You'd be unable to obtain employment except as my fileboy, and that would be a pity, would it not?"
"I suppose so, Professor Hilde," stammered Yglesias, as he struggled to maintain his composure. He wondered if it was strictly necessary for the professor to be leaning into him so. It was awfully hard to keep his mind on the Davis-Bacon act. He thought he felt something pressing into him, something that did not correspond to the position of any protruberance of his swivel chair ...No, it could not be. Professor Hilde was his critic, nay, his tormentor. However many times he, Yglesias, might wake at night with troubling dreams of the professor, it was impossible his feelings should be returned. Wasn't it?...
I'll admit I'm unclear on this, but if we're relenting--does google index hyperlinks that lead back to itself?
I was wondering the same thing -- Ogged, an explanation for those of us who, say, were considering Googlebombing crackpot attacks on us off the top 10?
The link to google was just fyi; the link to the previous post was doing the work. Even then, I'm not sure how much a site linking to itself helps in google rankings.
Great-- now I'll never be able to enjoy a serious conversation about the Davis-Bacon act.
Have they already given out the Nobel Prize for Literature, or can Tia still get it?
I finally boned up on this brouhaha. Two thoughts spring to mind:
Brevity is the soul of wit.
If you are explaining you are losing.
Oh, and if you are in a hole the first thing to do is stop digging.
So that is three things that spring to mind. Well, not 'things' exactly - homilies. Or sayings. Something like that. Proverbs?
"Brevity is the soul of wit" is action-guiding, for sure.
omg, Tia. It's a Mary Sue about blogging. My eyes.
I still don't know or care who Tom Hilde is. He bashed Matt Yglesias on the internet? That's pretty bad - worse than supporting the practice of torturing people to death, I bet.
Damn, Tia! Perhaps you can get Yglesias's name in Penthouse to go with his mentions in Playboy and SG. "I never thought it would happen to me..."
I still don't know or care who Tom Hilde is.
Yeah, don't let that get in the way of your commenting intelligently on the subject.
Yeah, don't let that get in the way of your commenting intelligently on the subject.
On the "subject" of Tom Hilde? This isn't the Kyoto treaty here. This is a random guy on a blog who apparently took a couple potshots at another guy on another blog - a different blog from the one that's now made him a minor obsession, I might point out.
From what I can tell, Tom Hilde has now become the antithesis of a troll - instead of showing up on someone else's blog and pestering other people, he gets to have someone else's blog attempt to pester him from a distance. Truly bizarre.
Isle of Toads-- I think this blog made Tom Hilde a minor obsession, not because he took a few pot shots at Yglesias, but because--when ogged, Labs and others criticized Hilde for being too hung up on spelling and equating it with intelligence--Hilde stormed off, exclaiming that he hadn't realized that unfogged was really the den of the Yglesias fan club.
So, in order to disprove that assertion ogged had to fulfill it by turning this blog into an Yglesias fan club, though John Emerson might disagree.
Re: 79: Except that it's not about extolling, even comically, the virtues of Matt Yglesias. It's just about kicking around some random shmuck on a random blog over a couple comments he made about ogged and Matt Yglesias, which is petty at best and weirdly fucked-up and dysfucntional at worst.
Toads, I'm not totally disagreeing. And I don't think it's right to leave comments on his own blog pestering him about Yglesias. For a minute I thought that it was funny, but now I'm ashamed of myself.
Toads:
In fairness to ogged, it's been a long, long time since he had sex. Though Hilde had no way of knowing that.
SCMT, that's a clearly-understood subtext for all things ogged. But must Yglesias-hating recluses suffer the consequences?
Isle, I can't tell if you're serious. Did you read any of Hi/lde's comments?
In any case, if someone's a big dummy who can profitably be made fun of, we'll make fun of him (or her). It's more or less what we do. We've done it to Chuck Simmins, Brian Leiter, Eugene Mazo, the Opinionista, and others I'm probably forgetting. I can understand not liking it, but I don't go to baseball games and tell everyone in the stands how boring the game is.
Yeah, the issue with Hil/de is not that he insulted Yglesias--I called him a "Matthew" once--but that he did it in a dumb way, and then when he got called on it was basically very rude to everyone--as Michael said, he aggressively misread everyone who disagreed with him. And then started the same thing over at Crooked Timber. It was more than just a couple of comments. And was totally humorless about it throughout.
I think becoming a running joke is the punishment that fits the crime; though I don't think we should harass him at his own blog, or deliberately try to googlebomb him. But I don't bear the guy any actual malice, and I don't think the jokes should go over the line into anything that might actually cause him harm.
Just to confirm -- this is the blog where earnestness is disfavored?
(Me, I like earnestness. I'm all for it. I am earnest, most of the time. But if you guys think you aren't earnest, you are so kidding yourselves.)
We are really kidding ourselves if we think expounding on Hilde's toolishness will bring about any serious negative consequences. Were I an employer of some sort, and googling through my various academic applicants, and I came across a blog in which the applicant was duly mocked -- rightly or wrongly -- I wouldn't think much of it, and might even like the fact. Even if the applicant was an obvious ass, as Hilde was.
So let's mock on, and let us limit ourselves only by what amuses and what does not amuse.
Hilde eats his own poo.
LB, I thought we decided that earnestness was ok, but o-earnestness was bad, and that no one actually knows what o-earnestness is.
81: oh come on, it was funny. I've laughed at far worse, and will again.
Oh, good. Because I'm here for the earnestness.
We must save humanity, because we are all one family, even Tom Hi/lde, the poo eater.
90: Well, I'm sticking to the pragmatic compromise. It was okay for Michael to do it just this once, but in future it would e blog trespassing.
I can think it funny and then still be a little bit ashamed of myself. That applies equally well to jokes about poo, BTW.
And sometimes I might get too earnest, but I recognize that that's a very dangerous state.
If we make it a bigger taboo, it will be even funnier when Michael does it again. Nobody had better ever post something naughty on Hilde's blog.
I'd be ashamed at myself for mentioning poo, but who am I kidding? I mention poo lots.
I think of mentioning poo as your signature move.
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Supercopraphagictomhildealadouchus!
Even though the sound of it
Is something quite tendentious
If you say it loud enough
You'll always sound pretentious
Supercopraphagictomhildealadouchus!
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Because Matt was afraid to check
His spelling as a lad
Tom Hilde his net rep did tweak
And told him he was bad
But then one day Matt learned a word
That saved his hurt ego
The biggest word he ever heard
And this is how it go:
Supercopraphagictomhildealadouchus!
Even though the sound of it
Is something quite tendentious
If you say it loud enough
You'll always sound pretentious
Supercopraphagictomhildealadouchus!
This is the best part:
But then one day Matt learned a word
That saved his hurt ego
The biggest word he ever heard
And this is how it go:
Because it requires singing in a cockney accent, and you realize, that is how the entire song must be sung, yes.
Bowing to the conscience of the pussified western males
I thought it had been established that the proper term is dutoitified.
I didn't want people to think I was serious.
Long ago, I spent many hours taunting AynRandoids on the internets.
I think you're looking for Randroids here.
I suppose that is a bit more elegant, isn't it?
Not as elegant as A is A, you have to admit.
To make it perfectly clear, ogged, it's not that Hilde isn't deserving of some mockery, it's that he's such a tiny person that this much sustained mockery appears to be wildly disproportionate. It's a grown man in a boxing ring with a chihuahua: it says more about the mocker than the mockee.
I think you've ably clarified the difference of opinion here, Toads: I'd pay good money to see a grown man in a boxing ring with a chihuahua.
In all honesty, ogged, so would I - I'd just feel guilty about it later.
