And Chest-Puffing Ensued
Time, I think, to dip a toe in the world of academia. Specifically, some lively rumblings on the relative importance of electricians and sociology lecturers. I suppose you could start here, with this, but there are plenty of tangents and pith, and moments of slightly comical indignation.
Among those moments, this one:
Societies lived without electricity for millennia. Some still do. Don’t give me this shit.
By contrast, societies have ALWAYS needed individuals to assess their societal needs and propose solutions.
That by nature is The Sociologist. https://t.co/A0xifaYrXW
— Tim Gill (@timgill924) July 22, 2025
You see, Dr Tim Gill, our associate professor, is “an authority on society and everything in it.” Being an “intellectual,” he can “diagnose entire societies.” And then issue instructions to people of less importance.
Update, via the comments:
From one of Dr Gill’s own students:
Quoting this,
Rafi adds,
Which does rather suggest a gap in his model of the world.
At one point, Dr Gill boasts of never having used a lawn mower. Because apparently that’s a credential. Readers may also note Dr Gill’s use of the word handyman, complete with connotations of something other than respect. Still, you’ve almost got to admire the imperviousness of someone who responds to accusations of being arrogant and haughty and unmoored from reality by being arrogant and haughty and unmoored from reality.
Regarding Dr Gill’s rumblings of alleged profundity and intellectual heft, commenter Chow Bag draws our attention to this.
No laughing at the back.
And it must be quite strange to be rendered indignant by something – assumptions about a field, its standards, and the kinds of people it attracts – that your own indignant replies are pretty much confirming.
The thing is, the field of sociology needn’t, I think, have become so disreputable. I see little that’s inherently dubious about an attempt to study human society. But the field’s near-total occupation, or colonisation, by smug, delusional leftists, with all of their blind spots and baggage – and the consequent near-ubiquity of faulty default assumptions and predestined conclusions – has, inevitably, taken a toll.
The kind of people who, like Dr Gill, want to use a pretence of academic rigour to propagate their own rather weird and implausible political preferences.
Which is why we get supposed social scientists who find it problematic that Wikipedia entries written by men about pop culture topics that tend to be liked by men are often longer and more detailed, more nerdy, than entries by women on topics that are more likely to be of interest to women. As if men and women were somehow – and must be – identical in their psychology, their preferences and priorities, and as if any difference in Wikipedia entry length must be a result of some social oppression, some invisible downtroddenness.
And likewise, it’s why we get a social science lecturer being bewildered by the inegalitarian distribution of litter, and fretting about how to “narrow the gap” in discarded fag packets and food-smeared detritus, while studiously avoiding any acknowledgement of obvious differences in behaviour between social groups, as this would presumably offend his own egalitarian assumptions. And who gives no thought, none at all, to how the litter gets there in the first place. As if it just fell from the sky, randomly, like overnight snow.
And among Dr Gill’s peers, thinking of this kind is hardly uncommon. Hence the reputation.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye, and so forth.
A data point, I suppose.
🤦🏻♂️
But he didn’t see the pushback coming…
It does rather suggest a gap in his model of the world.
At one point, Dr Gill boasts of never having used a lawn mower. Because apparently that’s a credential.
Dr Gill’s capacity for self-flattery reminded me of a certain professor of philosophy.
🤦♂️ 🤦♂️ 🤦♂️
Laughed, not sorry.
Okay, that was funny. I suspect that Dr Gill, our Understander Of All The Things, is going to end the day a little… bruised.
Still, you’ve almost got to admire the imperviousness of someone who responds to accusations of being arrogant and haughty and unmoored from reality by being arrogant and haughty and unmoored from reality.
He thinks he’s a shaman.
Diagnostic for NPD, right there.
“Sociology professor here” has got to be the world’s worst flex.
Lecturing in sociology. It’s the fourth emergency service.
Beloved Sister-In-Law #1 spent many years working in admin at the local university. She told me the hardest part of the job was dealing with the egos and status insecurities of certain lecturers. Many of whom felt a need to pointedly look down on mere administrators.
She wasn’t talking about lecturers in maths or physics, you’ll be shocked to hear.
Let’s put “Dr” Gill in change, then, obviously.
How convenient.
We can all see the nature of *this* sociologist.
Tim Gill respectfully mentions fabulist Michel Foucault. Huh.
Speaking of fabulists: The entire field of sociology has been largely taken over by the left, blocking the entry of non-leftists and the publication of non-leftist findings.
Previously in the world of the social sciences.
It’s a place where mysteries abound. And require much funding.
I wonder if Tim Gill has lunch regularly with a fellow prof, Patrick Grzanka, who was rightfully called out by Matt Walsh in “What Is a Woman?”
Even a more red-blooded institution like the University of Tennessee will have these types. Someone has to have the easy courses to offer the guys playing on football scholarships*. Go Vols!
Strong ‘B Ark’ vibes with this one.
Now I want to go over to campus and find this “doctor.”
It must be quite strange to be rendered indignant by something – assumptions about a field, its standards, and the kinds of people it attracts – that your own indignant replies are pretty much confirming.
Previously in the world of the social sciences.
From that post:
Pacific Palisades has entered the chat.
By contrast, societies have ALWAYS needed individuals to assess their societal needs and propose solutions.
Too true, the fall of the Roman Empire can be directly traced to their not having a sociologist.
Meanwhile, the best review:
🤦 🤦♀️ 🤦♂️ 🤦 🤦♀️ 🤦♂️ 🤦 🤦♀️ 🤦♂️ 🤦
Lecturing in sociology.
Of the 36 (!?, 1 for every 849 undergrads) Sociology* faculty at UT-Knoxville, he appears to have been promoted to Ass. Prof. so Second Lieutenant of the fourth emergency service.
(“Social Sciences” are neither social, nor science)
“Don’t give me this shit,” says the sociology lecturer.
…says the sociology lecturer.
Forgot the link, it is enough of a travesty he was promoted, and none dare call him Mr.
Auugghh…comments need a Minnow warning…logic and reason taking a beating.
While much truth to that, the football players…and similar… likely learn more on the football field than most students learn in their classrooms. I might even submit that the football players…and similar…are better off not showing up for such no-show kinds of classes. I have entertained the idea of a college or university where all students/academics are *required* to participate in at least one sport with objective win/loss results. One individual sport and one teams sport. In fact I find it a bit odd that I have never seen anyone suggesting this. Even facetiously.
The service academies I believe still require at least an individual sport, though even at that the individual would be part of a team (boxing, fencing, etc). Where I began my peripatetic undergrad mess, two semesters of a PE course, unless excused for some physical reason, were required and included either individual or team sport at least at an intramural type level.
The thing pinheads like this cannot fathom is that economies and societies emerge bottom-up from the decisions of lots of individuals. No one is in control. When a tyrant is actually in control he can do good things or bad things, arrange society or create chaos. Napoleon and Ghengis Khan both set up a good postal system. Would not recomend them otherwise. Academics suffer no consequences for being wrong, and they often are wrong. Bertrand Russell was in fact a genius…and supported the Soviet Union.
As to “societies always needed a sociologist” ahahaha they always had a priesthood, but that priesthood did not arrange the economy or lay out highways or set tax policy. Most of the time society went along without consulting the priests at all. Rarely rarely rarely were there philosophers (Greece one of the few examples).
Oh goody! Finally someone who can provide a complete solution to Navier-Stokes to give us accurate weather forecasts. Meteorologists, farmers, emergency services personnel and outdoor enthusiasts, to name only a few, will be so grateful.
Yes. UF had a PE requirement for incoming freshman as well. It was so incredibly lame. I actually loathed it. The “teacher” was an older track team coach. The premise was that kids went to college and stopped exercising, thus the class was needed. Which itself was stupid idea. Nothing objective came from it tho. My point isn’t so much to the physicality per se, bowling or pool or darts would suffice. It’s the objectivity of win/loss based on real-world things that happen largely outside one’s head.
In other news, cross-dressing man who campaigned for “safe spaces” and advised police on domestic violence matters stabs partner fifty times.
Naturally, the BBC coverage obscures some, shall we say, pertinent details.
Heh.
Even if we accepted his argument about the relative value of sociologists and electricians (which are ridiculous), there’s no evidence that they are any better at doing this than most other people.
It would be like if someone started an academic field studying magic and, when mocked, saying “By contrast, being a wizard would be so useful”.
Just a reminder that if any readers would like to enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions, comment editing, upvotes, and live notifications – you can scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page and click register.
It’s free and quite painless.
Heh.
So garden variety gay with lots of extra steps. Right.
Not unrelated, Queering Psychedelics.
Sign up now so you don’t miss, “…world-renowned queer scholars, therapists, Indigenous leaders, and psychedelic experts…” and it is queer-centered and has a justice-informed pedagogy the latter of which might have something to do with ramifications of illegal drug use a skeptic would say.
Note:
But not unfit to claim to be a woman, it seems.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
And yet the “solutions” proposed (demanded) by sociologists are almost universally useless and often destructive–ruinous, even.
Nature can be a cruel mistress.
[ Recalls history professor John Gill in the Star Trek episode about space Nazis. ]
They started a Crowdfund to escape from the US, citing safety concerns for the trans community.
I can’t imagine why he’s unemployed. /sarcasm
[ Starts playing Alien: Isolation. Emerges from hypersleep, manages, eventually, to get dressed. ]
Why are all the activists crazy/leftist? Because normies are busy building a business, coaching sports, cuttting the grass, and going to church. “Leave me alone” does not motivate people to riot and burn shit.
The size of the ego on this one. While societies may have preceded electricity, it is only recently, in soft, western, post-electricity societies, that a useless B-Ark git like this guy can parasitize the host society and thrive upon it. Early and primitive societies depend(ed) on everyone pulling their weight – find enough food, defend the settlement against invaders, wildlife, etc. – basic survival took up most of their time. As societies progress, I think they develop craftsmen and artisans (making useful or at very least decorative items) before they develop philosophers. So electricians still >> sociologists haha.
Exactly! And if the priests were able to wrest power and control things like the economy and whatnot it was because they managed to scare or otherwise manipulate a superstitious, gullible population into following their every dictate. But the larger and more complex a society became, the less power the priesthood had, I think.
Wanye Burkett weighs in.