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The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

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Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#301

Post by progman32 »

vorpalhex wrote: post #267
herbstein wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally quite hard for a trans person to be civil with a transphobe. Just as it's hard for e.g. black people to be civil with a racist. The bigot will, whether conscious or not, make the life of the minority absolutely terrible. With LGBTQ it is therefore not just a difference of opinion on taxation, or a few percentage points difference in a tariff. For trans people it's about whether the other person even ac…

Let's throw in a more complex example. Is someone who identifies as a "trap" trans? Is that self identification trans-phobic? Is it a valid self identity? What if someone identifies as a "trap" but not trans?

Could you clarify your point? Not sure I follow.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#302

Post by ifyoubuildit »

cgrealy wrote: post #237
everdrive wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, you can't "agree to disagree" on LGBTQ rights if you belong to one of those categories. See also pregnant people and abortion rights. Why can’t you? Is it impossible to imagine civil friendly people who simply do not share one’s views on these issues?

Because in general, those conversations are about important things that affect your life. It's not as polarised these days, but it was within my lifetime that consensual homosexual sex between adults was illegal in many parts of the world. It still is in some countries. You cannot "agree to disagree" when someone believes you are broken or sinful or whatever and wants to put you in jail. That's just one example. I'm…

I think part of the problem is the circumstances of two people meeting on social media. It's like one of those break-the-ice prompts for new coworkers, but instead of lighthearted nonsense, the card says "the gays are evil, discuss!".

In the real world, two very different people might meet and start to build a history and a good deal of rapport and trust with each other before ever getting anywhere close to a divisive issue. When they do eventually get there, without a mob watching, without the fear of every word going in the permanent record, the conversation would likely be far less of a dumpster fire, and minds might actually be changed.

As it is, a lot of the discourse you see online is indescribably bad, and I think a lot of it is down to throwing two strangers into a conversation that they would never naturally arrive at upon first meeting.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#303

Post by vorpalhex »

Pxtl wrote: post #265
everdrive wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, you can't "agree to disagree" on LGBTQ rights if you belong to one of those categories. See also pregnant people and abortion rights. Why can’t you? Is it impossible to imagine civil friendly people who simply do not share one’s views on these issues?

Texas just unveiled a law that proposes putting parents who support their children's gender transition in jail for child abuse. That means one side thinks the other side is a child abuser, and the other side thinks that bigots are going to throw them in prison for being a supportive parent. This is not something you can be "polite" about.

1. It was an order, not a law

2. It was a clarification of existing rules

3. It does not make "supporting your child's gender transition" a jailable offense.

The order says subjecting a child to invasive medical procedure can be abuse, and that doctors and teachers have a legal requirement to report abuse.

Here is the order for your reading pleasure:

https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-dfps...

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#304

Post by [deleted] »

toastercat wrote: post #71

I tried being a Twitter user for a bit last year, mostly because a lot of engineers I admire use it to communicate about interesting topics and also their work. But after a while, I realized even they will pollute my feed with politically divisive topics, whether it be from them retweeting something, or liking a tweet, or even entering into the fray themselves -- Twitter will find a way to get me to see it. For a whi…

[deleted]

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#305

Post by civilized »

wpietri wrote: post #247
toastercat wrote: post #71

I tried being a Twitter user for a bit last year, mostly because a lot of engineers I admire use it to communicate about interesting topics and also their work. But after a while, I realized even they will pollute my feed with politically divisive topics, whether it be from them retweeting something, or liking a tweet, or even entering into the fray themselves -- Twitter will find a way to get me to see it. For a whi…

Quoted post unavailable.

> "my life as a member of group X should be better than that of other groups" is a political position.

This isn't at all what the GP said, and that fact is one of the biggest reasons we don't like engaging in these types of conversations: a hostile stranger is liable to stop in and hammer you with a comment that reeks of contempt and disdain, and egregiously distorts what you said.

"I don't want to experience all the worst experiences that anyone on the planet is having" is an extremely different statement from "my life should be better than anyone who is less fortunate than me". If you fail to distinguish these two, you're definitely just as guilty of the latter as anyone else.

So, sorry, we're not here for it. And if you want to persuade us into being here for it, distortion-loaded shaming definitely isn't the way to accomplish that.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#306

Post by sjmm1989 »

wanderer_ wrote: post #296
madrox wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite theory comes from an HN comment describing it as the "toaster fucker problem." I'd attempt to re-explain it, but the original comment is great (and easy to search for. Not many mentions of the phrase "toaster fucker" on HN.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667362

Ironically enough, that thread devolved into an irrelevant political argument.

Such is the way of the internet.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#307

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

"and they don't try to pick fights at school board meetings."

wtf - way to pick a political side in an article. So "normal, nice" people are people who never question the government, especially not if Democrats are in power?

These people were picking fights about the government transitioning their kids. Or rather, I guess from their perspective, the government picked the fight.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#308

Post by lvass »

rektide wrote: post #160

so much salt in the comments. why risk putting yourself in the world? why risk opening your mouth? i dunno, why do you leave your house? a lot of you probably dont really have to. do you not want to engage in the world? are you not curious about other people, interested in heearing them think? does having direct access to incredibly high grade people not excite you for some reason? do you not want to grow and get bet…

Are you seriously comparing the world to consent manufacturing machine?

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#309

Post by AussieWog93 »

colordrops wrote: post #289
AussieWog93 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you got banned by Twitter, it was probably more than merely "suggesting" that free speech was important.

No, this is exactly what happened. My tweet suggested nearly verbatim what I said above, and in response I got verbally abused and insulted by literally dozens of people from the trans community. They scrubbed through my tweet history, replying to old tweets and reporting anything they could. They reported a very old tweet where I promoted pacifism (I'm a pacifist), but it was sarcastic, stating that if we are gonna…

>Choose to believe it or not, that's your business, but this is exactly what happened.

(I do believe you. By comment was in response to your original one, which lacked a lot of the context you just provided.)

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#310

Post by themaninthedark »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #190
themaninthedark wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a good example: "You just used 'OK' in your comment, only white supremacists use 'OK'."

I mean, it's an example...

I would ask you to think back to 2019 when a large majority on Twitter and from the mainstream media took a picture of some high school boys in Washington DC and brandied them about as the face of racism in America.

"He has a racist smirk"

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