what's incredible to me is how this guy and his fellow travelers are basically incapable of writing anything of actual substance. it's just endless discourse on the discourse. - ThreadSky

jamellebouie.net • 517 days ago

what's incredible to me is how this guy and his fellow travelers are basically incapable of writing anything of actual substance. it's just endless discourse on the discourse.

Reposted from Philip Seymour Hoffmanatee

the Atlantic just going full fash with it huh

Comments

jennaroutenberg.bsky.social•517 days ago

I’m reasonably sure that if you asked me to guess the title of the piece given only the author’s name, I would come pretty close to this. No mention of sophomores at Oberlin or the many burdens of yacht ownership, but this is otherwise exactly what I’d expect of “Thomas Chatterton Williams”

kmagnacca.bsky.social•517 days ago

Basically a tossup between him and Friedersdorf.

seentoomuch.bsky.social•517 days ago

Connor was my first guess, but this guy was #2

wafflecut.bsky.social•517 days ago

I enjoy* how nearly every online interaction he has turns into him judging the other person’s civility and either congratulating or castigating them based on his score.

*By enjoy I mean I not only blocked him on Twitter but put his name in my muted phrases list because he’s wasted enough of my time

robloblaw.bsky.social•517 days ago

Ah yes the guy who kicks people out of his chateau for their views has some more free expression takes

skoryy.bsky.social•517 days ago

Pounding the table like he's beat boxing Rammstein.

rowyourbot.bsky.social•517 days ago

'These Kind of People Annoy Me and Will Probably Annoy You Too' could be the title of every piece they write.

rowyourbot.bsky.social•517 days ago

They are walking talking headaches.

lproulx.bsky.social•517 days ago

True. In a similar vein, those who always reduce everything to electoral politics, because policy and governance are actually hard, requires knowing something about something, not just keeping scores.

samcohen.bsky.social•517 days ago

The Chatterton class

matthewdownhour.bsky.social•516 days ago

TCW is especially florid in his manner of saying literally nothing

helios-daedalus.bsky.social•517 days ago

Just a jobs program for the most vapid dipshits.

rhetoricpj.bsky.social•517 days ago

truly grim!

weirwoodtreehug.bsky.social•517 days ago

His writing always comes off as how Niles Crane would write if he were kind of evil.

jroberts548.bsky.social•517 days ago

“Let Maris have her loathsome dinner parties.”

joseph-crowley.bsky.social•517 days ago

I got a few paragraphs in, but it felt like it was a joke written in the persona of an incredibly privileged elitist talking down. Sadly The Atlantic isn't The Onion, so it was just someone writing earnestly as a privileged elitist.

jstehlin.bsky.social•517 days ago

dilettantism as a vocation

danielquinn.bsky.social•517 days ago

Here is Williams begging his conspiracy theory deranged friend not to go too far, and here he is a little later thanking him for some tech advice.

mvon.bsky.social•517 days ago

IDEAS section.

Hey, free speech for the losers too.

*applause*

csburton.bsky.social•517 days ago

Probably a massive oversimplification, but I really do wonder if it's as simple as in the real world, there would be clearly good and bad things, like war crimes are bad, but if it's all just takes you can be reasonable and shocked forever. It kicks you out of morality.

amaryah.bsky.social•517 days ago

He literally just keeps rewriting the same shitty piece over and over

carynrose.bsky.social•517 days ago

i'm just mad they get paid LOTS OF MONEY to do this

alexstar.bsky.social•517 days ago

every time I see his byline in the Atlantic, I die a little

actuallevi.bsky.social•517 days ago

If you are writing about the discourse you can pretend you are writing about the current event without actually addressing any of issues.

jmchao.bsky.social•517 days ago

Didn't he kick out a visitor at his house in France because the guest talked shit about Bari?

jammerjim.bsky.social•517 days ago

"Chatterton" is a little on the nose, innit?

tackmanbabcock.bsky.social•517 days ago

What I'm saying is that if he were "Thomas Substantiable Williams" he wouldn't be sitting where he's sitting.

megateer.bsky.social•517 days ago

I think that every time I see one of his pieces cross my path. (I’m certainly never seeking them out.)

spearhafoc.bsky.social•516 days ago

Love too write a headline like a Mr. Burns quote.

thebumpasaurus.bsky.social•516 days ago

He never did anything either, just appeared one day with one article that keeps repeating

jamellebouie.net•516 days ago

nah he is a protege of george packer and he first appeared, on my radar at least, accusing ta nehisi coates of having essentially the same view of race as richard spencer

whetmoser.com•516 days ago

didn’t know he was a packer protege. that’s interesting

rcownie.bsky.social•516 days ago

TCW's interview with Emily Ratajkowski should have been the end of anyone taking him seriously. Not that anyone ever should have.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephenlaconte/emily-ratajkowski-sexist-interview-twitter

calderwood.bsky.social•516 days ago

For a moment I confused this with Herbert Spencer and I was going to have a lot to say (he had a will-they/won't they romance with George Eliot, and an *elementary* school in my hometown is named for him) and then I remembered David's just that boring little rich boy nazi from Whitefish.

calderwood.bsky.social•516 days ago

*Richard.

benalpers.bsky.social•516 days ago

He also wrote two memoirs before he hit the age of 40. (There are vanishingly few people who ought to write even a single memoir before they're 40, and TCW ain't one of them.)

clegggg.bsky.social•516 days ago

Why don’t you have any takes that hot mr bouie

airball47.bsky.social•516 days ago

I am not intimately acquainted with Spencer’s oeuvre, but this seems incorrect.

markshatraw.bsky.social•517 days ago

Having ideas would require reading something other than posts.

izzle.bsky.social•517 days ago

When all you have is a culture war hammer...

celticdragon1.bsky.social•517 days ago

Writing about the writing on the writing.

Seems about on the nose for Chatterton

jroberts548.bsky.social•517 days ago

I can only read that headline in a sneering midatlantic accent.

jroberts548.bsky.social•517 days ago

Or like a really gothic southern spinster who was once southern belle—a tennessee Williams antagonist.

sasquatchparilla.bsky.social•517 days ago

When I was in high school, I had a realization that if I just joked about everything with ironic detachment, I could sound clever without revealing my ignorance by actually saying anything about anything. Who knew I could have taken this skill all the way to the top.

autodidan.bsky.social•516 days ago

Is it weird I read his title in a British accent?

anniebkay.bsky.social•517 days ago

Doing their best to cover a war like a horse race or board game.

chadstanton.bsky.social•517 days ago

“Navel gazing for good”

omfproductions.bsky.social•517 days ago

Doesn't that asshole live in France where they were criminalizing people for supporting Palestinians? Did he move back?

mattbernius.bsky.social•516 days ago

That was the first thing that came to my mind as well.

mikeduncan.bsky.social•517 days ago

Shallowest end of the pool

aethyr.bsky.social•517 days ago

So shallow that it makes you wonder “is that a puddle?”

gamleode.bsky.social•517 days ago

It's now the Modern American Way, where they create a clumsily built policy as a 'solution' while avoiding the true original source issue; thus shifting all debate/discussion focus to the botched solution...two problems for double the price. Think homelessness.

wendelschwab.bsky.social•513 days ago

I still can't believe anyone signed a letter authored by the bozo.

They should have did a hard pass as soon as they saw he wrote it.

maraleia.bsky.social•517 days ago

I want to launch so many columnists into the sun metaphorically of course. They are less than useless in every way imaginable.

loki1001.bsky.social•517 days ago

It's the Atlantic, Jamelle. They write there to be substanceless.

flawless.bsky.social•517 days ago

I get what you’re saying, but is this TCW piece not a substantial declaration of a position on the actual conflict itself? Why else would someone get their undies in such a twist about these protests?

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