Raging against a machine made up of humans

In confidence for my paid subscribers, and thank you in advance for reading in the spirit intended. Wellington is a small city in a small country, and I don't want to make life worse for anyone involved in this situation.

Over the course of a few days, me and thousands of others have likely watched a woman's career destroyed - by her own judgement, for sure, but also by another woman who ought to have been her ally.

It's a social media drama of the sort that happens every day, and would hardly be worth an eyeroll, except that it'll probably have outsized consequences for one of the key players. More than that, it's a sign of the times. Progressives trying to dismember each other while democracy burns seems to capture the spirit of our age. It's bothering me in a personal way too. The whole drama speaks to the state of the public service, of which I am part, and our fraying attempts to maintain the trust of the public we seek to serve.

I'm going to explain what seems to be going on, and at the risk of defending the indefensible, try to shed a different light. As I do, I want to offer you insights into my sometimes-beleaguered world, reassuring you that public servants are people too.

Some background first. You might have heard of a woman named Brie Anglesey. She's a musician, has starred on a reality TV show, and writes under the handle I am Brie Elliot, breaking down political and policy issues for readers. Brie is young, articulate and really good at what she does: her grasp on complex stuff and her communication skills are formidable. As a result, she's got a following of some 17,000 people.

Brie's been investigating charter schools. Charter schools are an ACT party cause, and David Seymour is the Minister responsible for them. As she was digging, Brie discovered stuff that concerned her, and so she made a complaint to the newly-formed Charter Schools Agency. What happened next isn't entirely clear, but the complaint didn't move quickly enough for Brie's comfort, and while some issues were rectified, she felt others weren't. She continued to email the Agency.

And this is where the drama began. Brie's complaint was being handled by an official we'll just call the woman. After a month of back and forth, the woman emailed Brie politely, to see if she wanted to kōrero about her complaint on the phone. Brie did not. In fact, she was so angry with the phone call offer she posted the woman's email online, including the woman's name and contact details. Her followers reacted to the woman and her email as you'd expect.

Part of me sees where Brie was coming from: dealing with government can sometimes be maddening. Public servants have to front bad policies, sometimes work within slow processes, and usually can't access training in how to work well with the public. Most of us don't set out to make life difficult, but that is sometimes the result.

Whatever the case, by the time she was offered the phone call, Brie's trust in government was clearly rock bottom: an understandable reaction, and a problem across Aotearoa and internationally. She saw the offer as the Agency's attempt to avoid accountability. Maybe it was - but maybe it wasn't. I'll give you an example from my own work life.

Years ago, when I was employed at a major Ministry, we were getting increasingly upset emails from a lady wanting an outcome that wasn't possible. It's a long story, but the genesis was tragedy: the lady had lost her son. Now, in trying to make sense of things with a hole in her heart the shape of her child, she'd taken up an issue she believed had led to his death. Continuing to email her back was doing more harm than good. I decided I'd just ring the lady, even though I was dreading it - not her anger, but her pain.

Maybe you're bracing for something awful, just like I did as I dialled. It never happened. The lady took my call. For about twenty minutes, I listened more than talked. I still couldn't help her, but now she could see that was because I had no room to move - not because I didn't care about her. Mum to mum I could whakamana her, in a way a thousand cautiously-scripted emails never could.

When Brie published the woman's email, it clearly hit a very raw nerve. The woman leapt onto Brie's Facebook post and began commenting under her own name, accusing Brie of doxxing her. (This wasn't quite correct - public servants' work can be requested as official information, so unpleasant though it is, we all need to be prepared that our names might make it into the outside world.) The woman believed she was responding to Brie in her private capacity, but of course, she was commenting on a work matter; and she was calling into question her own neutrality as the complaint-handler.

I watched with a raised eyebrow. We public servants are process-loving people, and this was pretty out the gate. I can't speculate on the woman's motives. What I can say is that being targeted for just doing your job can hurt. Public servants are paid to take an amount of flak, and it definitely gets easier with experience: these days, I'm OK with it. But learning to handle the flak took practice. To give you a sense of what it's like behind the scenes, I'll offer some more examples.

I once spoke at an event where a guy had a go at me in front of the crowd, taking to his feet, raising his voice, and telling me I had him shaking with rage - all while I stood painfully alone behind a podium onstage. I've been the subject of a malicious complaint, made by a politically-motivated group who didn't like the policy I was working on. One of my more excruciating moments was when I did a bit of work I knew was slightly rubbish - but in a chaotic and stressful workplace where everything felt like a fight, it was a battle I decided not to pick. I later watched on telly as my work was held up in Parliament during Question Time as an exemplar of shitness. I mean, I can laugh now.

Yes, it's part of the job; but you can see why stuff like this could make someone feel pretty bad. Layer on the stress of a high workload. Mix in the anxiety of an uncertain job, in a climate where public servants are seen as snouts in a trough. Add the fact that whatever unpopular thing a public servant does is generally their boss's directive, not their own idea. I'm speculating; but maybe public shaming was just the last straw.

I would love to tell you this is where the drama ended. It was only heating up.

The exchanges continued, becoming more barbed, with the woman posting further comments aimed at Brie, and Brie reposting them for her readers to take jabs at. Brie, clearly upset, filmed a short clip about the woman, addressing her directly, and telling her that her name would be added to Brie's complaint. She tagged David Seymour telling him to "sort his staff out". Her followers kept piling on. "God, I'm such a Karen", she said of herself.

Again, the woman struck back, angry at the attack on her as a self-described brown public servant (she is Māori and Pasifika). She said, and it hit me between the eyes:

... I have a very long personal history of calling out Wellington tilted head of white compassion behaviour when I see it. Seeing people like you kick the shit out of a demoralised public service is personally offensive to me as someone who cares about democracy as a personal and private person. Threatening me with 'my boss' in a public forum is also really fucking gross behaviour ... your online collective mean girl white feminist bullshit is tiresome and boring.

I was struck not because of the woman's anger at Brie, but her anger at Wellington. We are a comfortably liberal, well-heeled and well-intentioned town - and we are also, by and large, middle class and white. I believe the public service is genuinely trying to change, and making progress; but I also see Māori and Pasifika colleagues grapple with our quietly inflexible culture. They remain underrepresented and undervalued. Sometimes, I still see Māori and Pasifika colleagues left to clean up after morning tea, because someone has to practice manaakitanga while everyone else meanders, chattering, back to their desks. We still have a ways to go.

At this point in the drama it would be easy to simply paint Brie as the bad guy. I'm not comfortable with what she's done, or the power imbalance that enabled her to do it. But I want to share a few thoughts from the perspective of a woman online, albeit one with a smaller following who's not seeking a career as a public figure.

Online life is messed up. If you truly want Brie's kind of career, social media is the only way to communicate; but it puts you at the mercy of the algorithm. The algorithm rewards a combative style - rousing, angry posts get the best attention - but that also brings attackers. To fend off attackers, you need supporters. Supporters keep you emotionally safe, especially when you stick up for causes that stand to make you unpopular; but supporters, because they are human, can lapse into uncritical pile-ons, again rewarded by the algorithm. You might know deep down that's not right, but it's pretty hard to withstand: no one can fight a battle on every front at a given time. Sometimes it's just easier to adapt your moral compass to the landscape.

We talk about social media oligarchs devastating democracy in global terms: shadowy Russian bots influencing other countries' elections. But it's local too, and everyday. Sometimes it's two women, practically neighbours in a small city, fighting for algorithmic scraps as onlookers lose confidence in our own democratic institutions - and no one really winning except Mark Zuckerberg.

The pile-on bothered me a lot. The woman, much as she'd made bad decisions, is my public service colleague, and probably a member of my union. I felt it was wrong to sit by and do nothing, so I made a gentle comment on one of Brie's posts, acknowledging her frustration was understandable, but saying that trying to find solidarity with other workers is important. Emily Writes made an equally gentle comment, suggesting that direct communication reflects important cultural values, that trying to get someone sacked is a bit much, and that it's important to lead with compassion. Emily's comment disappeared, and soon after it seems that I was blocked. Again, I'm speculating; but even gentle challenge from your peers can be wounding, especially if you're feeling heightened emotions. I'm fine, but I wonder if Brie is.

It would surprise me if the woman fighting with Brie comes through this OK.

When a public servant slips up badly enough, there's a process. They're invited to a meeting, told they can bring a support person, and handed a letter. An investigation commences; and people aren't supposed to talk about it, but they do, as they wait for the lifts or stand around in the kitchen. If the person is lucky, they keep their job a little longer, but they risk being shuffled off discreetly in some future restructure. If they're unlucky, they're simply shown the door.

Either option carries shame. The best to be hoped for is the kind of shame that pays the bills a little longer.

I'll reiterate this piece isn't intended to provoke commentary on individuals. Thank you for reading.