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Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

theguardian.com

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Re: Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

#531

Post by corrral »

sva_ wrote: post #522
corrral wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tricking you into taking flowers and then trying to charge for them is already a Whole Thing, too. Not that that makes what they did any better, but this specific behavior sets off "scam" alarm bells for me.

I mean they've been doing that in Paris for quite some time when you're walking with someone. 'What you don't want to buy roses for 50 euro? Is your girlfriend not worth it to you?' Luckily my girlfriend told the guy to put his roses some place I may not mention here.

Haha, Paris was exactly what I was thinking of. "Pretty lady, flower for you! You want flower? Flower for you, pretty flower for a pretty lady," pressing the flower toward the woman as if trying to give it away for free, and then if she takes it, "that'll be [insane price for a flower]", hand out for payment, and resisting taking it back.

Your best policy in public in a major city is to internalize Tony Stark's strong aversion to being handed things.

Re: Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

#532

Post by notriddle »

F_J_H wrote: post #473
strix_varius wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" I see Matthew worked as a mid-level manager in a tech company.

Joking aside, Something I find fascinating about ancient wisdom literature that has been in circulation for centuries - honed and refined generation after generation, is how succinctly key concepts are boiled down in ways that can be easily grasped/remembered. (In this case, avoiding conflict of interest/segregation of duties.)

1. Selection bias. There's a lot of stuff in the Bible that is total gibberish to modern ears.

2. Inversed cause and effect. Even if you aren't Christian, there's a good chance that the morals you were taught as a child are influenced by it. The Christian Bible is literally the world's best selling book.

Re: Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

#533

Post by jacquesm »

alias_neo wrote: post #384
phkahler wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Even car accidents... I hate when a real car accident is attributed to a drunk driver when it was not. There are plenty of wrecked cars from actual drunk driving, you don't need to lie to get an example. Some people think their intentions justify their actions, even when their actions can accurately be described as "lie" or "cheat" or "for profit" or some other dishonest thing. This may be effective in many cases,…

My wife and I, individually, and on various occasions over the years, have paid for random strangers' shopping. We don't do social media, we don't even tell anybody, except for this one time, right now to support your point, so I think it's appropriate in this case. We've told each other because we talk about our finances and it's reasonably to discuss why the grocery bill was double triple, etc what it would have be…

I've done this but only if the person has an obvious problem to pay for their shopping.

Re: Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

#534

Post by fleddr »

If filming a "genuine" act of kindness isn't suspicious enough, the "hold this" move removes any benefit of the doubt.

It's maddening that a "creator" (read: grifter) does this but what I find even more upsetting is how well it works. Millions of likes and comments celebrating it.

There was a time where these kind of actions were more pure and we didn't need to be this cynical. It's probably already more than a decade ago, but I remember a video series themed "being nice to men".

The idea being that men live in an emotional desert and rarely receive compliments or acts of kindness, often not even from their very own friends. So when they do receive it, it's a system shock.

For example, the main character would attend an old guy in the park and say how cool it is that he feeds the pigeon daily. And then walk away. You could see the old man processing it. First puzzled, then delighted. It made his day, but probably his decade.

Middle-aged men were even more puzzled and initially perceived it as an attack. Wtf does this guy want from me? Why would anybody do anything nice for me, what's the agenda here? Legend goes they're still thinking about what happened that day.

Anyway, it was a cool theme (almost a social study), no monetization, and the participants were later informed and asked for permission to publish. I don't think it's possible in today's landscape to do this the genuine way, the incentives have changed too much.

Re: Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

#535

Post by todorus »

msrenee wrote: post #485
tomc1985 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many , not most. Meth is a huge problem here.

I don't see how that refutes my argument.

Neither does it his. It is a problem for some areas to the point it will completely erode the empathy of people who have to live with it. Their stake is not an internet argument, but a daily reality to deal with.

You can then argue that it's caused by mental illness and we should be empathetic, but I've talked to multiple people who actually worked in psych wards, my mother being one of them. They know they need to take care of them and be empathetic, but boy don't they all have stories to tell that has caused them to dehumanize them to some extent, or suffer burnout as the alternative.

Don't just empathize with the mentally ill, but also the others you so easily burden with doing the actual work.

Re: Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

#536

Post by bshipp »

gnicholas wrote: post #452
Mordisquitos wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Random acts of kindness DO happen, but are usually not captured on video. Indeed. In fact, when the act is intentionally captured on video by its performer, not only is it already very debatable that it is an act of "kindness"... but it is also obviously NOT "random"! (For the colloquial meaning of "random" of course)

> when the act is intentionally captured on video by its performer, not only is it already very debatable that it is an act of "kindness"... but it is also obviously NOT "random"! I was about to propose to my girlfriend and was setting up my DSLR on a tripod to take photos via IR remote (she thought we were just going to take photos of us at sunset). Then a guy came walking by and offered to take the photos for us. I…

Usually you can tell a plant by their lack of opposable thumbs and green pallor.

Re: Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

#537

Post by FalconSensei »

matheweis wrote: post #412
FalconSensei wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with flowers, I would be mad, because them I'll have to take them home, put on a pot near the window, water them... (I don't like the idea of just throwing plants and flowers out in the trash). Actually, I would like it even less because I hate the idea of cutting flowers out to put on a bouquet. They'll just die way faster for nothing. I think it's just not a good thing to give someone

> I hate the idea of cutting flowers out to put on a bouquet. They'll just die way faster for nothing. Many kinds of flower plants last longer and produce many more flowers if the flowers are cut away from the main plant. I have flower plants in my garden that I intentionally and frequently cut blooms from because it keeps the main plant healthier and blooming longer.

Ohh, I didn't know that. Thanks for the info!

Re: Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

#538

Post by closewith »

tomc1985 wrote: post #529
xzel wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people would consider drug addiction a mental illness. If not it often is being used as a coping mechanism for mental illness or something else. Being able to empathize with people who are struggling is exactly what OP was talking about.

And at what point do those people who made the choice to be drug addicts deplete the goodwill that is afforded to them? This isn't Minnesota or New York City. Our winters are mild; you don't need meth to stay warm at night, and the transients here tend to have more than enough clothing to stay warm when it gets into the low 50s/40s. In fact this mild weather is probably why we have so many of them literally dumped on…

> And at what point do those people who made the choice to be drug addicts deplete the goodwill that is afforded to them?

With respect, do you believe people choose to become addicts?

Re: Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

#539

Post by pdonis »

notriddle wrote: post #525
pdonis wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Give me a good example I already gave you one: this very site. > a troubling sign that even journalism is relying on likes for reputation more than properly checking sources. So-called journalism has been in that mode for decades, if not centuries. If anything, the Internet makes it harder for them to keep it up, because there are so many more ways for their practices to actually be exposed so people can see them.…

> I already gave you one: this very site. Hacker News is almost entirely influencer marketing, and has been from the very beginning. The whole point is to push Y Combinator the angel investment company.

> Hacker News is almost entirely influencer marketing

Really? That's what this discussion is? Or, for that matter, every discussion I have participated in in the 10 years or so I have been posting on HN? Are we both posting on the same site?

I get that the existence of HN gives publicity to YC, and that every so often pg or sama posts a new essay and those always make it to the front page. But to call the site itself "almost entirely influencer marketing" seems to me to be, to say the least, highly inaccurate.

Re: Woman ‘dehumanised’ by viral TikTok filmed without her consent

#540

Post by wahern »

TameAntelope wrote: post #506
nonrandomstring wrote: post #40

The reason this act breaks a moral boundary is that it subverts a principle of "ends" [1]. A genuine random act of kindness cannot occur if it's being filmed. Filming the act turns it into a virtue display. It also turns the subject into an object of utility, a means and not and end in themself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Ends

Meh, virtue displays that still help people are fine by me. I don't think this really helped anyone, but "dehumanizing" is an overreaction, IMO. "Mildly annoying" is probably the more accurate term.

Words like "dehumanizing" and "trauma" have lost their meaning. I was listening to an NPR program a few weeks ago discussing the Uvalde massacre where the speakers described the Uvalde families as being "traumatized" while also describing themselves (the speakers) as being "traumatized" by the online political debates over gun rights. They very briefly caught themselves, and at one point of them briefly, self-consciously excused themselves (something like, "not [traumatized] like the Ulvalde families"). Yet they continued (I lost count how many times) using and relishing in the word as a descriptor for their experience of the debates.

It's absurd and surreal, and yet here we are. People think they're being empathetic by applying these words more widely but it's really reflective of how disconnected people are from reality, and how much narcissistic license they've given themselves. Social media gives people an illusion that they're connected to others, but the effect has mostly been to turn the vast majority of people and issues into caricatures. One might even say it's "dehumanizing", but what's the point.

A decade or two ago the word for criticizing the TikTok video would have been "objectifying". That word got overused, too, but it still had academic connotations (from the feministic movement) that better contextualized the point someone was making. Sadly the political left PC movement has created such an arms race in linguistic virtue signaling that more precise, descriptive language is considered lacking in empathy and therefore, well, "dehumanizing".

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