Jason Arday - Supergenius

[aufbahrung]

Outwitted the Cambridge elite for years - that's a plus I suppose

[aufbahrung]

At least he never got elected. Imagine the state of the state that elected such a class clown to high office?

[aufbahrung]

[L'Emmerdeur]

At least one Canadian troll is loving this.

[Brian Peacock]

At least one Canadian troll is loving this.

Indeed. Who's going to cite Thomas Sowell to support deriding intellectuals now?!

[aufbahrung]

Go with the data. He never had any. Just anectdotes from his friends.

[aufbahrung]

[Brian Peacock]

He topped himself. Happy now? Justice has been served, eh?

[aufbahrung]

Didn't he have a choice though? He could've Netflix'd and chilled without a care in the world laughing the absurd situation away in a easy come, easy go manner like anyone sensible rather than go full Greek tragedy on the matter?

Though with so much prestige, money and such at stake with a big uni, him knowing the names and everything, the question is did he go voluntary at all? I'm not saying he was 'dealt with' like the academic mafia took him out literally, but sociology creeps know every trick in the book regarding coercive nudging and jedi mind control..

[Brian Peacock]

There's one mistake here, and it belongs to Cambridge Faculty of Education for not doing their due diligence when they employed him in 2023 with fanfares about him being the youngest black academic in the uni's 800 year history. About 6% of his PhD thesis appears to have been plagiarised, either by design, through laziness or incompetent referencing (we'll probably never know which now), and he's told a few tall tales about himself - but then again, who hasn't when we've felt the need to impress others?

This story 'broke' on the blog of the so-called race-realist Nathan Cofnas, a man who literally believes race and intelligence are so inexorably linked that black people would hardly be represented in academia if it was a truly meritocratic environment - and if it wasn't for the cruelly pernicious and corrupting influence of DEI. Cofnas lost his job at Cambridge for publishing those exact beliefs in 2024, so it's not unfair to say he had a pretty big axe to grind and Arday offered him a handy wetstone.

For Cambridge's and Arday's failings (whatever they are - they're still being investigated by the uni), he's been subject to non-stop attention and opinionating in the right-whinge-o-sphere on the quality of his academic work (are those journalists, or you and I even, knowledgeable enough to judge the quality of his output? Probably not eh?), broad assassination of his character, speculation about his motives, gossip about his relationships and his spending habits, an entire article resting on the testimony of only one former student saying he turned up late to lessons "more than once" (was that twice, three times, more?), and even articles expostulating on whether he could swim and what kind of apparently inappropriate car he drove.

If it was any other time of year this would have been a small footnote of a story rather than a piled-on witchhunt perpetrated by second-rate understudy hacks and framed as a some kind of disgraceful national outrage - what with this being the "silly season" when politicians and the leading lights among the commentariate traditionally take a holiday.

And let's not forget the elephant in the room, eh? A big part of the reason Arday stories became viral was because he was black, and as such the reams of manufactured, self-congratuatory #OUTRAGE acted as a both a useful dog-whistle for 'race realists' and out-and-out racists alike, as well as a lightning rod for those who enjoy expressing a fundamental distrust of academia - particularly those disciples which explore the confluence of social, cultural and political concerns, and through that produce work which might contribute to describing the material state of society while simultaneously holding the powerful to account. And while it's no small irony that the commentariate are generally the beneficiaries of the private school to oxbridge to media pipeline, it's also not a coincidence that the likes of the Murdoch media, the Telegraph and Daily Mail, GB News and Talk TV, right-whinge YouTubers, twitterers, substackers, podcasters, and Telegram channel runners have gone all-in on this story and milked it for all the clicks, views, likes and shares they can. And these are also the sources of your own opinions too, aren't they? You've even posted them in a thread you created for this very purpose.
.

.
And now a man is dead, after presumably taking his own life, and the family members, friends and colleagues who knew him and cared about his well-being are having to deal with the impact of that. This is a death by journalism.

[pErvinalia]

And let's not forget the elephant in the room, eh? A big part of the reason Arday stories became viral was because he was black, and as such the reams of manufactured, self-congratuatory #OUTRAGE acted as a both a useful dog-whistle for 'race realists' and out-and-out racists alike, as well as a lightning rod for those who enjoy expressing a fundamental distrust of academia - particularly those disciples which explore the confluence of social, cultural and political concerns, and through that produce work which might contribute to describing the material state of society while simultaneously holding the powerful to account.

i.e. the Cunts of the world.

[aufbahrung]

Sociology is such a sloppy field, at the stage of astrology for the most part, you can't take it seriously. If there's one thing that allowed him to climb the greasy pole of academia it is the nature of the subject, the maturity of the discipline. The race debate is a case in point. Marginal differences, exactly the same as those with height though that lacks public controversy, sure to manifest. Across populations of height or colour or whatever else these will manifest. They don't require intervention so much as realisation and acceptance. The prettiest women are often not the brightest. Life is not fair but it is all marginal across populations. Trying to arrange deck chairs on the Titanic which is the nature of positive discrimination, invites icebergs.

[Brian Peacock]

What makes you an authority on sociology as an academic discipline? Do you have some special expertise or insight, or is it just secondhand vibes?

[Brian Peacock]

And let's not forget the elephant in the room, eh? A big part of the reason Arday stories became viral was because he was black, and as such the reams of manufactured, self-congratuatory #OUTRAGE acted as a both a useful dog-whistle for 'race realists' and out-and-out racists alike, as well as a lightning rod for those who enjoy expressing a fundamental distrust of academia - particularly those disciples which explore the confluence of social, cultural and political concerns, and through that produce work which might contribute to describing the material state of society while simultaneously holding the powerful to account.

i.e. the Cunts of the world.

Exactly. In both senses.

[aufbahrung]

It's the one's who took him upstairs who are to blame. His enablers. Clearly they have the greatest motive for pushing him into suicide ideation, along with the skills in emotional manipulation to pull it off. Sociology believes it is the family which is the basis of all original sin, so by ostrasizing him after the news broke they were already pushing him into a existential corner. And family could provide no relief from ego collapse, via indoctrination in the quasi-science of sociology