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Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

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131–140 of 370 posts

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society never made an exception for sexual abuse at all. If I accused Justin Bieber of beating me with a crowbar, but somehow I was unable to provide any evidence at all that I was ever even injured, people wouldn’t take me seriously. If I successfully started a rumour that Biebs was a serial crowbar assaulter, it’s possible that it might get some media traction, but publishing rumours like that (at least used to be)…

What are you talking about? Women are still often told that sexual harassment is their own fault for dressing the way they do, or get told "boys will be boys". It used to be expected that women would have to put up with it in the workplace. Rape victims get told that if they really didn't want it to happen they could have fought harder. There are still judges in the US giving lighter sentences or no jail time at all…

Which is a justification for the objective metoo set out to achieve, and it seems one a lot of people agree with.

However those objective are very clearly to undermine the foundational principles of justice. Perhaps you find the arguments for this to be very compelling, but it’s simply a fact that metoo set out to promote a presumption of guilt, in all areas of society that it was able to influence. Most metoo advocates entirely avoid addressing this fact, and a lot of people reasonably disagree with metoo because of it.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#132

Others are discussing the important and serious stuff, so I wanted to touch on something more lighthearted. I was in the e/n scene so knew of SA but never got involved, and it wasn't till 2013ish when he started doing YouTube playthroughs of the worst indie 'games' he could find which were quite entertaining on their own merits and showed off people's creativity that might otherwise be ignored. Examples: https://www.…

[deleted]

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#133
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an autistic: no. Lack of social awareness isn't an excuse for rape and abuse jokes. You don't need any social awareness to figure out that you shouldn't do that. The concept of "jokes at someone else's expense = bad" isn't hard to grasp for an analytical mind. Autism is not stupidity. You are not doing "autists" any favor by trying to excuse this behavior. (Also, for some reason , autistic women aren't seen joking…

“Jokes at someone else’s expense = bad” seems to me like it literally* requires some social awareness. * in its original definition

What definition are you using? The idea that autistics don't empathize is, put it simply, false.

And difficulty reading social cues doesn't apply in cases where many, many, many people openly and directly explain why jokes at someone else's expense are bad (and correlate with the people being the butt of the joke being mistreated).

I have deconstructed the rape joke in another comment. Maybe to you immediately feel why it's not an OK thing to say. I go through the analysis. We both arrive at the same destination by different means.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society never made an exception for sexual abuse at all. If I accused Justin Bieber of beating me with a crowbar, but somehow I was unable to provide any evidence at all that I was ever even injured, people wouldn’t take me seriously. If I successfully started a rumour that Biebs was a serial crowbar assaulter, it’s possible that it might get some media traction, but publishing rumours like that (at least used to be)…

What are you talking about? Women are still often told that sexual harassment is their own fault for dressing the way they do, or get told "boys will be boys". It used to be expected that women would have to put up with it in the workplace. Rape victims get told that if they really didn't want it to happen they could have fought harder. There are still judges in the US giving lighter sentences or no jail time at all…

> There are still judges in the US giving lighter sentences or no jail time at all and citing this sort of reasoning.

Name one case in the last 5 years where the judge uses the victims clothes as a reason for a light sentence in USA, and where the judge wasn't punished for it. It should be possible to find one right? If you can't even find one for a whole 5 years I wouldn't say that this is a problem we need to care about, once per 5 years in a population of 300 million is basically never.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This comes off as naive. I saw the domestic abuse allegations again him and decided to read up. Indeed, reading allegations and treating that as research does come off as naive. > Yeah, they're jokes, but when I stopped being a child that stopped being funny, you can still see him making these jokes int interviews about his situation. It’s cool that your sense of humor about that changed during adolescence. That’s…

Society is really confused about right and wrong. Wendy Williams (a talk show host) asked her audience if one of her guests, who wanted a baby, should trick her boyfriend into fathering a child. The audience laughed and said yes -- Wendy laughed too, and agreed. This is called paternity fraud, because once pregnant the father will have no say in the disposition of the child, AND will be on the hook for child support.…

> if one of her guests, who wanted a baby, should trick her boyfriend into fathering a child

> This is called paternity fraud

It's called rape. He consented to sexual activity under the impression birth control was being used. If it wasn't, the consent was invalid.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, autistic people don’t get a pass for being socially awkward, nor are we entitled to one. The internet autism communities (particularly the edgelordy ones) often enable this nonsense because “fuck you I don’t want to change”. Social skills therapy exists and you can learn these things. Poor social awareness does not make up for contributing to a hostile work environment, full stop. Autism means you have to work…

Right, we shouldn't exempt autistic people who make bad jokes. But you shouldn't assume that those people are rapists or domestic abusers just because they make those jokes.

>But you shouldn't assume that those people are rapists or domestic abusers just because they make those jokes.

No such assumption is made. However, rape jokes are a signal that gives some credibility to such accusations.

Just like the knowledge of someone making constantly jokes about murdering a particular person (say, Jensson) would be very much on the radar as a suspect in case Jensson accuses that person of attempted murder.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#137
post #89
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an autistic: no. Lack of social awareness isn't an excuse for rape and abuse jokes. You don't need any social awareness to figure out that you shouldn't do that. The concept of "jokes at someone else's expense = bad" isn't hard to grasp for an analytical mind. Autism is not stupidity. You are not doing "autists" any favor by trying to excuse this behavior. (Also, for some reason , autistic women aren't seen joking…

> The concept of "jokes at someone else's expense = bad" isn't hard to grasp for an analytical mind. Rape jokes aren't at anyone's expense. A joke at someone's expense would be making fun of someone, a rape joke is just something like "9 out of 10 enjoys gang rape" etc, that isn't what people mean when they say "joke at someone else's expense". So to me your post just shows that you lack the social awareness to under…

What an idiotic comment. Not liking and making rape jokes = "lacking social awareness"?

The fact that somebody would act different if they grew up in a different environment isn't an argument for anything. If I grew up in Jim Crow era America, my likelihood of being a segregationist is increased which proves nothing about the virtue of that belief.

Also, "baby burning jokes" are exclusively funny to 14 year olds and the perpetually adolescent mind. They're not considered the height of comedy in any mainstream circle.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#138
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, they're jokes, but when I stopped being a child that stopped being funny Autists often don't pick up on that and continues to make unfunny or cringe jokes year after year. That makes them prime targets for false accusations, since the world is full of people like you who will assume they are guilty just because they are socially unaware.

I fail to see how the parent is insinuating that they believe making distasteful jokes implies guilt.

You fail to see this because they don't :)

They say that the history of making such jokes makes the accusations more weight, which is a reasonable thing to say. We are not putting someone behind the bars for making a joke.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#139
One of Richard Kyanka's latter acts at Something Awful was to edit the apology to furries down to one line: https://www.somethingawful.com/news/bolgy-wolgy/

The author on the matter: https://twitter.com/MALTSCHLITZMANN/status/12984608093419192...

Lowtax is definitely not going to the fun hell with all the furries he told to yiff in hell.

Re: Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, creator of Somethingawful, has died

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But yours is not an odd take, I'm afraid. You present strawman (seeing it makes it credible), an ad hominem (not projecting, but thanks for the baseless speculation), and another strawman (I did not and do not confuse meaning with definition). All in quick succession, all in seeming defense of the principle: we can and should considered guilty until proven innocent. There's no argument to be made since you didn't mak…

> You might start with a scenario which is, by construction unfair... So... you're countering one strawman with another? >I can't understand how or why anyone would want this to be how things work It's a hypothetical scenario, a strawman, so of course not. Is this actually how things work? Do you have any stats about wrongful accusations to back up your ideas? My personal experience from speaking to women who have ac…

>So... you're countering one strawman with another?

A strawman is when you misrepresent another person's argument. What I've done is present a hypothetical situation, apply the GP's prescribed view to it, and asked if it's fair. It is basically a kind of "proof by contradiction" where you assume the opposite of what you want to prove, apply it to a situation and show a contradiction, and so it must be false. I think it's a pretty strong, argument, actually.

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