Gatekeepers Old And New

There was a time, not all that long ago, that nobody liked a rat. Organized crime enterprises originating in Sicily had their "omerta" code, where one swore to choose prison over giving evidence to the authorities. Hall monitors (see: Bobby Brady), were evaded and mocked. "Snitches get stitches."

More recently, and in this we might look to the Mob again for the inflection point, ratting others out to save your own ass became less taboo. Those whose asses didn't need saving may have noticed the attention that the rats, narcs, and stool pigeons were getting and, feeling left out, decided to join in on the squealer brigade. Social media became infested with people reporting others to "the authorities" or offering juicy targets up to the cancel mobs.

The counterpart to our society of rats is the popularity of gatekeepers. On one side, you have people telling the world about others' misbehaviors, legit and fabricated. On the other, you have people limiting your access and restricting your freedom of action. Gatekeeping, like ratting, has evolved over time.

This story about how the Canadian progressive rock band Rush got its first big break got me thinking about that evolution. In ye olde tymes before technology and Youtube made it easy for anyone or any band to share their music around the planet, making it in the music biz required some gatekeeper opening a gate. Talent wasn't enough. Persistence (endless gigging in bars for not enough money to even cover expenses, playing for other bands and their handfuls of friends) wasn't enough. You had to be noticed by someone, which was very much a "right place-right time" crapshoot. Like many others, music was a realm of glass ceilings.

Donna Halper, who broke a glass ceiling of her own by being the first female disc jockey (DJ) on Northeastern's radio station, was sent a copy of Rush's first (self-released) album by a promoter who liked the band but whose label wasn't interested. As a new music director for a Cleveland radio station, she put "Working Man" on the air. It was a hit, and Rush grew from garage band to legend.

Would they have made it had Ms. Halper not given them that break? YouTube is proof that there are hordes of talented musicians out there today, and we've no reason to think that this plethora of talent is a new phenomenon. In fact, the music explosion of the 60s and 70s suggests the opposite, reinforcing the notion that there may have been dozens of Pages and Plants and Claptons and Bruces and Bakers and Lifesons and Lees and Pearts who, absent a break somewhere along the line, never got the break that'd have made them household names.

The best gatekeepers had an ear for what would sell to the public (music was and remains a business), but there can only be so many such, and there are only so many hours in a day, so again we are left concluding that there may be Mozarts lost to history.

Today's gatekeepers are of a very different sort, however. Instead of standing astride the pathway to success, ready (and eager, because there's something in it for them) to open it for the worthwhile who are fortunate enough to intersect with them, their focus is on quashing that which they don't like. Sure, you can post your content or links to it on Facebook or YouTube, and it's "findable," but if it contains messaging that doesn't conform to a preferred narrative, it won't get the same exposure as content that does.

That's the "throttling" form of gatekeeping.

Another is the "fact-checking" form, which is in the overwhelming majority of instances I've witnessed it, a redefinition of "fact" as "opinion." In fact (pun intended), Facebook admitted as much in court.

Throttling of a different form is in play with the various forms of "fact-check" gatekeeping. People of sufficient stature or perseverance can challenge those labels, deletions, and other restrictions, but in time-sensitive matters, the process of adjudicating the dispute might drag out so long that the impact of the shared content is muted or even mooted. That's exactly what happened with the New York Post's breaking of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Stall the sharing long enough, and you've gelded the story.

The only people who liked the hall monitors were other hall monitors and the teachers who were "not cool." Unfortunately, we have a large swathe of the American public today that likes* and desires the hall monitors and their behavior.

I explored this "hall monitor" behavior before, in 2019's Our Rat Culture (about the rise of the Social Justice Warrior) and 2021's The Hall Commissars (about how the "mediocre in society became its most eager auditors of correct behavior." All are variations on the same theme - people trying to control others by curating their access to information and punishing transgressive thought.