An Indictment of Vigilante Educators
By: Ben Wood
Tags: Social Justice, Education, Opinion, Social Media

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

Several years ago, I published a YouTube video talking about the linguistics of Black English (also known as African American Vernacular English). The video was fairly well-received by casual language enthusiasts, and I was satisfied with what I had created. But as with anything involving Black communities on the Internet, racist comments quickly began to crop up. I could manage deleting the harmful comments, but the video was being posted to racist sites and I couldn’t stop it at the source.

Eventually, my video was found by none other than the co-founder of Vice Media and the founder of the Proud Boys- Gavin McInnes. Back then, the Proud Boys were an outside fringe group, not known in the mainstream. But their message was the same: straight, white, male supremacy. McInnes used clips of my video in his own video about “Millennial-splaining”, the title being an attempt to misdirect from his eventual racist remarks about Black English.

I wasn’t aware that his video had been posted to YouTube (he never asked me for permission to use/edit my video), until I got a flood of comments on my video from his viewers making crude remarks and mentioning McInnes. So I went to watch his video. In it there was carefully edited footage to make me look silly, coupled with comments about my physical appearance. I don’t know why, but I decided to leave a comment on McInnes’s video, addressing some of the misinformation he was pushing. I knew I would get flack from other commenters (and I did receive a good amount once people recognized it was me), but something surprised me. While many commenters clearly had no desire to engage with me, a good amount of them did in good faith. I was able to have a productive discussion about the nature of Black English and its misconceptions. In the end, I was able to change some people’s minds, and their perceptions of me were radically altered from McInnes’s portrayal:

Obviously this comment is not a beacon of progress; there’s much more that needs to be discussed. But that this person was willing to read my comments and actually watch my video in full, and admit it in a YouTube comment on McInnes’s video really surprised me. If this person did it, it’s likely others did as well, for as long as McInnes’s video was up (it was eventually taken down).

I think a lot about this series of events, and I often wonder where some of these people are now. Did they start listening to other people outside the far-right bubble? Did they give the “sjw” crowd the benefit of the doubt? I like to be optimistic. But I am absolutely certain of one thing: this person’s mind would not have changed if I did not engage with the misinformation. And indeed, that was my broader goal on YouTube- to engage with the public at large about languages and linguistics. Some of my videos took a critical look at linguistic concepts that are commonly misunderstood in the mainstream, such as Black English or what constitutes a dialect versus a language. When people asked questions on my videos, I always did my best to provide a comprehensive answer, providing sources when applicable. I want to see a more educated world, and that’s not going to happen if I don’t engage with people who have the guts to be vulnerable and ask a question.

And it does take guts! In our culture we punish ignorance without understanding its cause, and in recent years a trend of complete cancellation has developed for popular figures who have the misfortune of being human and making a misstep. I think in this age especially, asking a question about a sensitive topic puts one in a very precarious position. They could be fighting internal biases born from years of misinformation, or outside pressures that have restricted their access to particular knowledge. On the Internet, their flawed question could be bashed down as bigoted, and they get shut out of learning. They need someone patient, who can take the time required to teach and turn the inevitable mistakes into lessons. Progress is not a light switch in someone’s head. It is a long, sometimes lifelong process of unlearning biases and listening to others. What makes a good educator is the dedication to guide students through this long journey.

With the explosion of social media and the deployment of preference algorithms, it has become harder and harder to see content that you fundamentally disagree with. Apps like TikTok can get a snapshot of your interests within a few minutes, and only show you what it thinks you would like. This drives “engagement” in the form of likes and comments, and we get a rush when our content is well-received by others. But this has led to the development of echo chambers and the false perception of our own opinions as mainstream. Anybody can make content and tag it in a way that locks others out. And here is where the issues start to take root. An untrained person can make a social media post listing off a few facts about a social justice topic, and those facts get validated by that person’s social circles with hundreds or thousands of likes. In a short time span, that person becomes a go-to source for that information, with shares linking back to that person’s profile. The person gains a substantial following, and is expected to post similar content about similar topics. Eventually, after making this content for a period of time, they call themselves an “educator”, and the positive engagement from likes and shares encourages them to make more of the same reinforcing content without actually making an impact on society. These are the ones I refer to as vigilante educators. They don’t have a formal platform or formal training for mass education, and what they educate on is often opposed to the institutions that would afford it to them. There are no requirements to becoming a vigilante educator other than a dedicated following who will promote your content. It does not require credentials or training in research and engagement, just a savvy sense of social media marketing.

The issue of credentials is tricky. Credentials do not necessarily make an educator, rather it is the patience and dedication to improving others over a long period of time, as I stated previously. That said, classes, workshops, and advanced degrees are designed to help educators learn the most effective methods of teaching and engaging with students. In order to engage with someone who disagrees with you, you have to learn how to handle ingrained biases, how to build up context for a topic, and how to diffuse a tense situation. Of course, these resources are not easily available to the public at large, and we can’t reasonably expect everyone who wants to teach something to be fully credentialed. But we can and should expect a level of patience from people who have expressed a desire to educate others. If someone calls themselves an educator, that person needs to be prepared to engage positively with those who need the education, including those who would most vehemently disagree with them.

And this is my indictment. Vigilante educators adopt the title, but aren’t required to really understand how to educate effectively. Because of preference algorithms, they are never forced to interact with people who hold opposing opinions. In the worst cases, they demean others for being ignorant or apprehensive about the topic. They believe the huge amount of likes and shares validates their approach, when in fact it’s just a result of technology promoting a heavily biased worldview (ironically, due to capitalistic influences).

Before I deleted TikTok, I was bombarded with leftist content because I followed some leftist TikTok-ers and used some hashtags like #decolonize. I certainly didn’t mind the reinforcement, but the type of content I was seeing was from people who were trying to educate on a particular leftist topic that I already knew about. One profile I followed was a weight-lifting communist who educated on aspects of communism and socialism. Another was a leftist who had educated about misleading crime statistics in Black communities. And TikTok’s algorithm would show me more profiles like these, and more content with those hashtags. If I didn’t know any better, I’d’ve thought everyone in the country were radical socialists! And therein lies the other major problem with vigilante education on these platforms: the people who actually need that education are not getting it. I already know about communism, socialism, and racist institutions in the United States, but the average American does not. These educators aren’t engaging with people in any meaningful way, not through any fault of their own, but because the technology is working against them. People who are ignorant of the world’s social issues are not going to be on leftist TikTok, because they have no exposure to or engagement with those kinds of ideas. And the preference algorithms are going to make sure that remains the case.

I wonder how many of these vigilante educators on social media have actually had to physically teach these topics to other people, whether through a community outreach program or a formal institution. I don’t want to assume they have zero experience, but let it be known that educating in a real-time, physical setting is worlds different than educating on social media. On TikTok, you have 15–60 seconds to explain a point. On YouTube, you can spend a full hour talking about a particular topic. But in real life, you don’t always have the luxury of fixed time slots because people learn at different rates. Lesson planning is an extremely challenging task, because you have to take into account the needs of your students. You cannot assume that everyone will comprehend the topic at the same rate or in the same way. And you need to be prepared to educate those who come into the class with extreme bias, because the second we shut someone down for their ignorance, we close them off from learning from us forever.

Too many people who call themselves educators are not willing to spend the great length of time required; it’s faster and easier to make a 60 second video than to make a month-long lesson plan- to the detriment of potential learners. And because of preference algorithms, the people who need that education the most do not receive it. The facts and lessons swirl in a bubble tightly sealed by technology and advertising interests. In a social media setting, our ability to connect with learners is severely hindered; people see a profile and not a human being before them.

I absolutely believe in the essence of the vigilante educator’s beliefs. We cannot progress as a society if our institutions prevent education on particular topics like racism, classism, and the adverse effects of capitalism. We need educators who are accessible to the public. But we also cannot progress if our methods of teaching and engagement hang on absolutist thinking in a social media time frame, rather than planning for physical engagement over an extended period of time. Do not call yourself an educator if you’re not willing to put in the work. Education is tough, ask any teacher in the United States. One spends hours planning, educating, and then reinforcing important concepts that help students progress. It requires a passion and commitment to engage with all learners, not just the ones who will give us likes and comments.

So my suggestion, as someone who has spent several years as an educator both on social media and in a real-time setting, is to think more in-depth about a topic you want to teach, write out a basic plan, and set up a virtual meeting with learners. Get to learn people’s names, introduce an atmosphere that allows people to be vulnerable about sensitive topics, and gradually guide people to the goal. Build a learning community. This doesn’t mean you have to delete social media, in fact you can utilize social media to advertise those meetings to others. This also doesn’t mean you have to put up with trolls, but just be cognizant of the difference between trolling and bias, giving people the benefit of the doubt. If more TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube educators took the time to actually hold classes and answer questions, I think the real, societal effects of that would reach further than any content they could ever create. Even more so, if they do this within their local communities. There are tons of free platforms to do this online (Zoom, Streamyard, Google Hangouts, Twitch), but a physical space is best when not in a pandemic.

I don’t know if I changed the societal outlook of that far-right YouTube watcher, but I know that it was the action of my engagement and my patience in explaining, that led to him changing his mind about me as a person and opening up to learn more from me. It was because I fostered a space where I gave the benefit of the doubt and answered the biased questions comprehensively. Everyone has the capacity to learn and change. This is the real work that vigilante educators need to do- to engage. Not for the likes, but for knowledge in its own right.