Today brings yet another masterly discussion about wokeism on campus

Today the New York Times published an op-ed by Emma Camp, a senior at the University of Virginia. The topic was stifling wokeness on campus, and as you can imagine it was not well received on lefty Twitter.

But it provides an interesting object lesson. David Roberts tweeted that the op-ed wasn't just bad, but practically a parody. I asked what was parodic about it:

"This one time, a friend of mine said something in class & a bunch of people disagreed with her" ... offered as evidence (the ONLY evidence offered) of some dark nationwide epidemic of self-censorship ... is the kind of thing I would write were I to parody this genre.

— David Roberts (@drvolts) March 7, 2022

But this is just wrong. Camp offered loads of evidence. You'll have to read the piece for yourself to get the context, but here's an abbreviated bullet list:

• Hushed conversations with philosophy prof.
• Friend lowers voice.
• Another friend fears a defense of Thomas Jefferson.
• Survey says 80% of students self censor.
• Feminist theory class about criticizing suttee. Eventually class discussions "became monotonous echo chambers."
• Brad Wilcox.
• Stephen Wiecek.
• Abby Sacks.
• Samuel Abrams.

Despite this, David's tweet immediately garnered hundreds of likes from people who obviously hadn't read the op-ed. They just saw something that seemed like a great dunk and added their enthusiastic support to it.

This is typical of Twitter, which is why we should all ignore it more than we do. Most Twitter pile-ons (of which this is only a teensy example) start with one person and are then amplified into tsunamis by vast crowds who know nothing about it aside from what that first person said. In other words, they're meaningless.

What's especially ironic about this one, however, is that the Twitter mob is doing exactly what Camp says she's experienced: they are dragging her so furiously that it makes her afraid to open her mouth in the future. And you can add to that a substantial number of people who are outraged that the New York Times would even publish this, which is also the kind of thing Camp is warning about.

None of this is to say that Camp is right. Maybe she's overdramatizing things. Maybe she's cherry picking survey data. Who knows? Maybe she's outright lying about some of the events she describes. If any of that is true, then have at her. But bring receipts.

Now, obviously Camp has not, in fact, been cowed by her treatment at UVa. She's writing about it in the biggest newspaper in the country! But that doesn't mean the dynamic she's describing doesn't exist. People who have never been the target of a woke mob can confidently proclaim that this is all just a myth, but those who have been in the crosshairs know perfectly well that it's very real. That's especially true for people who are less self-assured than the average blogger or Twitter user, both of whom famously love to mix it up in verbal arenas. Less contentious—or less verbal—folks are far more vulnerable to feelings of intimidation and far less likely to ever talk about it.

It's easy to nonchalantly dismiss the experiences of others. This is nothing more than asking people to be tactful. It's called "growing up." It's just people disagreeing with you. Self-censorship is a good thing. Maybe. It's certainly true that conservatives exaggerate wokeism for political reasons. But too many liberalish folks talk about this phenomenon—both in and out of the university context—to casually dismiss it as something that's entirely made up. It isn't, and it's a problem. The first step in fixing it is to at least admit that it exists.