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On To-day's Cloistered Virtues
Feb. 4th, 2026 06:02 amSometimes the evidence of your own eyes is text.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Neil Gaiman hadn't been posting on social media for a year since allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him. Now he has posted, a couple days ago, on his blog. Among other things, he commends the efforts of a Substack journalist called TechnoPathology, who has been conducting an investigation of the coordinated smear campaign conducted against Gaiman. When I read the original articles that came out in 2024, I thought the case against Gaiman was thin at best but just in the introduction to his series TechnoPathology finds even more points that I was unaware of, such as clear undisclosed conflicts of interest, such as the fact that one of the accusers happened to be the best friend of the woman in charge of the original Tortoise Media article, or the fact that the voices most vociferously aiming condemnations at Gaiman were consistently of the same ultra-rightwing political and ideological persuasions.
Again, it's absurd the left has convinced itself that it shouldn't call something a conspiracy under any circumstances. Or was it anyone on the left who got that virus rolling?
TechnoPathology says he didn't originally create his Substack with the intention of exonerating Gaiman but rather with the aim of analysing how information is currently being manipulated, and how people consuming that information are in turn manipulated, in the news media currently. The "social internet" as I saw John Green refer to it in an unrelated video I watched this morning but which also touches on the tangle of cognitive biases we currently find ourselves in:
But while I'm unashamed of using the word "conspiracy" and I'm glad there's at least one person making an effort to expose the one maligning Gaiman, I still find myself most disturbed by the people whom I knew were no part of the conspiracy but who nonetheless turned on him at the first mention of allegations. Like Pavlov's bell. Can I ask if these psychological triggers for compliance were planned or incidental?
