I read through Maher’s tweets this morning, and what jumped out at me above all else was that she seems completely and utterly un-self-aware. That, not her willingness to “give a performance,” is why her affect is so creepy. She believes it — and, worse yet, she’s never considered the alternative. ...

Does Katherine Maher come across to you as the sort of person who understands other people’s experiences — or, heaven forfend, who is willing to laugh at herself for her ridiculous traits? I don’t think she does. Whether she’s opining formally or responding casually to something she happened to see on TV, her approach is that of the cloistered zealot. Look through years of her output, and you’ll find no humility, no self-deprecation, no sense of humor, no understanding of context, no joy. You won’t even find a grudging acknowledgment that her worldview is unusual relative to the other people who live in the place she calls home. She’s a robot, an AI with skin, a drone equipped with an Oberlin textbook.