Reflection – Page 14 – The Renegade Coder

For whatever reason, American society has equated individualism with freedom. Lately, I've equated individualism with the downfall of society. Let's talk about that. The Role of the NFL in the Pandemic Today, I saw someone say that the NFL shouldn’t have a game on thanksgiving this year because it would likely keep families together longer which increases potential exposure to COVID-19. Naturally, I hadn’t thought about that, and it got me thinking. Not only would people possibly stay together longer, the games could actually motivate people to get together in the first place. While I have no evidence to prove that this would happen, it’s definitely something to consider. Of course, in American, this discussion is sort of pointless. In this case, someone said: “That's not the NFL's responsibility. That's on the families to make their own choices.” And as you can probably imagine, the original tweet was ratio’d. Now, I find this really sad because it basically hands off any responsibility to the individual. In this case, the NFL doesn’t have to consider regular people at all: they can do whatever they want even if it means endangering people. After all, it’s not their fault if you choose to get together to enjoy it. The Role of Twitch Amid Drama Recently, I had a similar sort of argument with one of my close friends about what happened in the Twitch community. In case you're reading this in the far off future, I'm referring to the time xQc got banned for stream sniping during a Twitch Rivals event. For xQc's antics, Twitch handed out a 7-day ban on their platform, a 6-month ban on Twitch Rivals events, and a forfeiting of any Twitch Rivals prize money. As someone who pushes back on individualism, I immediately thought “what was wrong with the system that allowed xQc to stream snipe in the first place?” When you ask questions like that, you start to think about ways in which the situation could have been avoided. If things could have been easily avoided and/or no attempt at mitigation was made, I tend to argue that the system was at fault. In this case, Twitch made no effort to provide private lobbies for their tournament. Therefore, they should have anticipated something like this happening. Now at this point, the “blame the victim” narrative starts to come out. And in fact, that was sort of the argument that my friend accused me of making: “If you leave your bike out without a lock and it gets stolen, it’s (partially) your fault if it gets stolen.” Of course, in this scenario, the person affected by what xQc did is not Twitch. They are not victims in this circumstance; the competitors that were stream sniped were. Therefore, a slightly better analogy would be: “If you asked a security guard to watch your bike and it gets stolen, it’s your fault.” ...at least that was the updated analogy my friend made. However, as I got to thinking, that analogy still misses the mark. See, in our first example, Twitch isn’t a security guard. They’re the entire infrastructure. It would be more apt to then say that: “If you leave your bike out and it gets stolen, it’s society's fault.” After all, there has to be some sort of environmental factors that play into you not having a lock and someone also wanting to steal your bike. These aren’t decisions that are made in a vacuum. Something had to have led up to both of those events happening simultaneously. However, if you're a rugged individualist, you might argue that both people are at fault. Surely, the victim is at fault because they should have known better. Likewise, the thief is at fault because stealing is wrong. As a result, the thief goes to jail, and the victim loses their bike. In the world of the rugged individualist, everyone receives just punishment. And this is where my gripe with individualism resides. In the mind of an individualist, your life is bound by free will. In reality, life is pretty fucking random. You don’t pick your parents, genes, nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, etc. You don’t get to pick what schools you go to or who your friends are—at least not in the literal sense, right? After all, your options are severely limited by where you happened to spawn in this D-tier simulation. Yet, in America, the belief is that everything you do is the sum of your choices. Therefore, anything that happens to you is either a product of your own effort or the result of your laziness. Isn’t that something? Basically, this fixation on the individual allows us to reduce seemingly complex systemic problems down to a simple question: did the individual deserve what happened to them? According to my friend, xQc deserved his ban because he broke the terms of service. By that logic, even the victims deserved what happened to them because they agreed to the format of the event. In the world of individualism, no one is allowed to complain as long as everyone consents to the rules. Yet, we never question who makes those rules. In this case, the only reason xQc was able to break the terms of service was because of a flaw in the way the tournament was set up. In a weird way, xQc actually exposed that issue which raised questions about the legitimacy of the whole tournament. If xQc could stream snipe, couldn’t anyone? And surely, if xQc was harming the game by holding back a few competitors, what’s stopping other stream snipers from sand bagging for their favorite streamers? Does Twitch not hold any responsibility for the actions of the people on their platform? The Role of Systems in Sports Teams Because we hyperfixate on the individual in our society, we say “xQC bad,” and then we call it a day. This failure to recognize the faults in the system is how we let enormous companies like Facebook dictate elections and propagate conspiracy theories from the moon landings to QAnon. See, it’s not Facebook's fault your uncle Kevin is an antivaxxer; it’s his fault. Until we start to challenge some of these systems, we are going to continue to have a bad time. You know, it’s really kind of funny thinking about this as an engineer. After all, engineers are constantly outed for their mistakes but no one ever questions that systems that allowed them to happen. If a bridge goes down, it’s an engineers fault—not that lack of redundancy in the system that should have caught the issue before it was too late. Weirdly, the only place I’ve seen us move away from individualism in America is through sports. Sports teams are inherently antithetical to individualism, and any coach (or rather, coaching organization) worth a damn knows this (see Urban Meyer). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WwWfG07mW8&ab_channel=CFBONFOX Because coaches know that they have to construct a system that allows all of their players to succeed. And if the team fails, it’s the failure of the system. Like we all know Jack Johnson plays some terrible hockey, but you have to ask “how did he get there?” Now, the tendency is to say Jim Rutherford, so you can’t just get rid of Jack; you have to get rid of Jim too. Otherwise, he’ll replace Jack with someone just as bad. Unfortunately, the problem with individualism is that you’re going to chase people all the way up the chain without ever solving your systemic problem. Do you really think firing Jack, Jim, and Mario is the way to go? The situation might improve briefly, but the same issues are bound to happen. This is why trash organizations continue to fail. They think that they just need the right people to be successful. We see this all the time with hockey teams that tank for picks. When they inevitably get that star player, do they become successful overnight? Why don't you ask the 2015 Edmonton Oilers and Buffalo Sabres? In reality, they need the right system. The Role of the Nail in the Coffin Lately, I've been really busy with grad school, so I haven't had a ton of time to write for this site. In fact, this article was written as a stream of consciousness while I was laying in bed. Against my better judgment, I decided to hit "Publish." That said, I really hope this helps folks think about the role of individualism in American society. After all, people I know won't wear masks during a pandemic. Talk about a literal nail in the coffin. At any rate, thanks again for taking the time to read what I've had to say. If you're wondering why I've been so interested in this topic lately, just know that it ties in nicely with my engineering education research. As always, you can help support these ramblings by heading over to my list of ways to grow the site. Otherwise, thanks for stopping by! Take care.