Some woman on Twitter posted an extremely innocuous ‘defended! I’m #PhDone!’ tweet with a pic and the place is going fucking feral attacking her because the title is a little obtuse/technical and I sometimes uncharitably wonder how much education polarization is just basically resentment. - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

opinionhaver.bsky.social • 86 days ago

Some woman on Twitter posted an extremely innocuous ‘defended! I’m #PhDone!’ tweet with a pic and the place is going fucking feral attacking her because the title is a little obtuse/technical and I sometimes uncharitably wonder how much education polarization is just basically resentment.

Comments

geminidrgn.bsky.social•86 days ago

I would suspect that it is mostly resentment. The good ol ‘how dare you insinuate through your achievements that you are better than me’

geminidrgn.bsky.social•86 days ago

The funny thing is the same people can accurately identify this sentiment in sports and view it as pathetic

tom-paine1737.bsky.social•86 days ago

The only excerpt I saw looked like postmodern gobbledygook. Doesn't mean that she needs to be attacked, or that Comp Lit/whatever departments need to be defunded, but this stuff is by and large bullshit.

kate10010.bsky.social•86 days ago

The weird thing is… what is there to resent? Oh you think this woman’s PhD topic is niche or undeserving… ok is this going to make her rich? (No) Famous? (No)

She gets a title next to her name that these haters think is nonsense anyway, why do they care?

crispybanks.bsky.social•86 days ago

She’s accomplished something that’s important to her and isn’t a bitter sad spinster like she’s supposed to be.

azincle.bsky.social•86 days ago

"How dare you write a dissertation on an extremely specific and novel topic!"

Like that's literally what the assignment is?

cdpositive.bsky.social•86 days ago

It's not "education" it's propaganda techniques 101.
Promote fear, anger, rage, up the dopamine, get addicted, repeat (worship the pusher; Twitter).

jortscity.bsky.social•86 days ago

What was the title?

towit12.bsky.social•86 days ago

"Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose"

hotelalhamra.bsky.social•86 days ago

You're like a war correspondent reporting from behind enemy lines.

celestinakitty.bsky.social•84 days ago

meanwhile i am wanting to be feral reading her actual dissertation because that kind of critical theory thinking is what i love to do..

brockmeyer.bsky.social•86 days ago

Ressentiment is the defining emotional state of the 21st century.

amyhoy.bsky.social•86 days ago

doesn't that call for the person feeling it to be down on *themselves*?

brockmeyer.bsky.social•86 days ago

I think of it more as a way to *avoid* feeling down on oneself, by denigrating that which is (perhaps subconsciously) envied.

I'm not a social scientist though, so my usage is potentially imprecise.

amyhoy.bsky.social•86 days ago

interestingly this is a word where the dictionary definition and wikipedia definition completely disagree

i learned it from the dictionary ages ago and the one i just checked said what i remembered: that it results in self-criticism

the wikipedia article says it's aimed outwards

brockmeyer.bsky.social•86 days ago

Yeah, I think it's probably a connotation/specialized terminology thing, which dictionaries are often poorly suited for.

amyhoy.bsky.social•86 days ago

which tbh makes a lot more sense

gbriggs.bsky.social•86 days ago

Reminds me of the James Baldwin quote: “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

kyliesertic.bsky.social•86 days ago

Oh that’s been my conclusion for a long time. That and “how dare Black people, women and queers think they’re better than me because they have a degree and I don’t”

kommando.bsky.social•86 days ago

It's so weird because there's never been more people with post highschool education. Even in Europe where much more of the population has a college / vocational degree, we've seen this phenomenon, although not as stark as in the US.

mithos343.bsky.social•86 days ago

That woman worked hard for little pay and little recognition and people who think college is a business factory are angry at her. Awful!

hamburglarhimbo.bsky.social•86 days ago

I read the abstract - it is a very compelling topic! She specifically notes how the wiring of our olfactory system can trigger judgement and rejection based on smell far faster than we can counter it intellectually, and of course how we are socialized to accept / reject scents. I want to read it!

snoozebuttonben.bsky.social•86 days ago

"...woman on Twitter..." pretty much sums it up

bendeebendee.bsky.social•86 days ago

people might call me elitist for this, but if someone is getting upset because they don’t understand the title of a PhD thesis, the problem is them and they deserve my contempt

“not understanding a PhD thesis” is normal and fine

getting upset about it is pathetic loser behavior

golikehellmachine.com•86 days ago

it’s pretty common even amongst the progressive non-college folks i know, so it’s at least anecdotally non-zero

sporkredfox.bsky.social•86 days ago

As someone with a masters degree, phds are sooooo elitist

slurmslurper.bsky.social•86 days ago

I work in a field whose preeminent graduate program is at Yale and it’s pretty common among my colleagues to say disparaging things about “Yalies” so I’d say educational resentment is common even within degreed communities

golikehellmachine.com•86 days ago

also, like, while i don’t share their (tbf, pretty mild) resentment, i do sort of understand it

sifu.tweety.fish•86 days ago

I get it but I think we need to inform people so they can feel the correct emotion about somebody doing a PhD, which is pity

acritt55.bsky.social•86 days ago

That’s kind of the reason I left twitter and came to Bluesky. You can’t post anything there without bots and losers replying with something insane.

corncobinc.bsky.social•86 days ago

The replies to this are some of the most hateful shit I’ve seen on the Internet.

veratchao.bsky.social•86 days ago

Growing up, there was a belief among some in my family that work that didn't involve your hands wasn't "real work." There was definitely an inferiority complex with them. A lot of pieces of our current political environment were always there. I feel like Trumpism is what assembled them.

esvrld.bsky.social•86 days ago

so many people, including many otherwise left-leaning ones, have completely bought into a basically fascist anti-intellectualism, where any knowledge that's not immediately values-affirming is cast as a threat

psyllobora22.bsky.social•86 days ago

That's grim.

roberthlangan.bsky.social•86 days ago

It is. It's also why conspiracy theories are so malignant in the people doing the resenting. They want easy answers and resent the fact that education reveals how messy and complicated things really are.

insanidadpublica.com•86 days ago

📌

bkmacd.bsky.social•86 days ago

People are interpreting this to mean resentment against the education but I initially read it as resentment against the woman.

peark.es•86 days ago

Porque no los dos IMO

bkmacd.bsky.social•86 days ago

Perhaps the systems and modes of oppression that people experience intersect and multiply. But naaaaah that would never catch on...

mithos343.bsky.social•86 days ago

It is absolutely both

mario-alberto.bsky.social•86 days ago

My gut feeling was to question the utility of her degree and dissertation, but to each their own. Seeing the replies to her tweet was a good case study on just how crazy Twitter has become.

rev-avocado.bsky.social•86 days ago

I've read a lot of people who are the first in their family to go to college or get an advanced degree deal with that from relatives. I think it's a nonzero factor.

christosilvia.bsky.social•86 days ago

My mom still remembers when her dad asked her how much she was going to get paid for getting an article into a journal, and was surprised that the answer was "nothing"

edgarallandoh.bsky.social•86 days ago

Well that _is_ part of academia's messed up labor structure.

wood-mousse.bsky.social•86 days ago

Getting articles into journals IS the job. That’s what the university is paying you to do!

edgarallandoh.bsky.social•86 days ago

Sure, if that's how higher ed still worked. Hasn't in a long time.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/when-a-college-contracts-adjunctivitis-its-the-students-who-lose

wood-mousse.bsky.social•86 days ago

This is a completely different thing. A professor at a university is there to do research and publish papers, and also sometimes teach classes and advise phd students. An adjunct is there to teach classes for free. That part is messed up. The publishing papers for “free” is not.

leastactionhero.bsky.social•86 days ago

heh, even my (quite supportive) family would tease me about getting “a real job” after grad school (where i spent 16 hour days doing like 3 “jobs” simultaneously) so i’d assume plenty of other people had it much worse

seedarkly.bsky.social•86 days ago

Went I went back for my Masters degree at night, I heard ,"oh are you going to be a professional student?" Uh no, and you're not supporting me so WTF anyway?

gpijanowski.bsky.social•86 days ago

Yeah, I've cut off a lot of people in my life because of that.

repetitiveuser.bsky.social•86 days ago

Astronaut meme here

curiousaboutupdog.bsky.social•86 days ago

50 bucks say more than half of them are "in this house we Believe In Science" types.

zas.bsky.social•86 days ago

no because those people are women who don't categorically hate other women. Sure some of them are NIMBYs but you've got yourself a category error there.

beneprism.rip•86 days ago

On Twitter, in 2024?

noturtlesoup17.bsky.social•86 days ago

My cash app is pancakesmmm bc they’re obviously actually all the kind that want to make divorce illegal and get rid of public education.

curiousaboutupdog.bsky.social•86 days ago

shit ur probably right :(

dariaphoebe.com•86 days ago

We created a world where the promise of doing better than your parents is dead for most people, and that seems to be manifesting — with some fostering of it — of resentment for people who seem like they might not be suffering so much. Despite those not being the people who created the problem!

thecharles1.bsky.social•86 days ago

I've definitely noticed this in some people I went to college with especially after 30. Their posts just kind of devolved into being mad that other people they went to school with were more successful.

ken-briggs.com•86 days ago

At least 90% of it

remfoxxi.testbench.gay•86 days ago

hard agree

cameroncorduroy.bsky.social•86 days ago

>90%

darkelfontheshelf.bsky.social•86 days ago

It's literally just Gab, now.