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Everyone’s offended these days

eev.ee

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Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#101

Post by mjblack »

hyperpape wrote: post #98
mjblack wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It sounds like he's bothered by how they're treating him, and he wants them to shut up, because he thinks their opinion is dumb and their way of expressing it is awful." Yes, because I've seen first hand what people do to those on twitter that say something that can be misconstrued as punching down, racist, bigoted, etc. It's not pretty and not nice in any sense. He is telling them to shut up in the sense that they'…

The vast majority of your comment is a non-sequitur. But returning to Fry: I think he's offended by his critics, even if he doesn't use that word. But here's what will blow your mind: as far as I understand what happened, I think he's right to be that way. They attacked him for doing nothing wrong. People are acting like there's some magical thing "offense" that's only felt by people they disagree with. But we all fe…

No, my comments are exactly part of the problem that Fry is talking about. He isnt saying that you shouldnt be offended, he is saying that just because you are offended no one should cater to you. He is choosing to leave twitter instead of asking twitter or the community to attack the people bothering him, which is a stark contrast to the social "justice" crowd on twitter, which are the ones attacking him. He can make commentary about being offended but thats about all he is doing.

Fry isnt exactly offended by his critics but to the outrage culture that believes that being offensive means that the person is a racist, homophobe, etc. That is why if you disagree with them on topics, while not being an actual bigot at all, they'll still call you a name that is defined by bigotry. That is why if you disagree with feminists (depending on which one), you're instantly labeled a men's rights activists without ever giving indication you are one.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#102

Post by Shish2k »

While it's true that "A) I'm offended, change yourself to accomodate me" and "B) I'm offended, so I'm going to leave" are both forms of offence, it seems pretty dishonest to say "A and B are equal, you're a hypocrite to complain about A while doing B" :/

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#103

Post by LnxPrgr3 »

bobby_9x wrote: post #55
mfoy_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the article mentions you! >People who have so desensitized themselves to everything offensive that they’re offended by mere attempts to be considerate.

It's not being offended by 'attempts to be considerate`. I feel like many of bullied are not getting the therapy they truly need. Instead, they are becoming the bullies through sites like Twitter and big companies, schools, and now even governments are catering to their whims because nobody wants the bad press. The same feminist group that twitter appointed to ther new free-speech censorship board has said some of th…

> The same feminist group that twitter appointed to ther new free-speech censorship board has said some of the most horrific stuff about men. It’s beyond offensive, yet there are no bannings or accountability.

Because not enough people do, I'll assume good faith here.

Thought experiment: if the feminists are just a handful of loud bullies, why does anyone care what they think? Why can they even get press outside of obscure publications of their own creation? Why do we actually pass laws to placate them?

If the rest of the world largely thought they were out of their minds and refused to entertain them, they'd have no power. Clearly they've convinced enough people that they're right, or at least pointed in the direction of right, that we try to help solve their problems, imperfectly as that may be… and imperfect it is! There's no Grand Poobah of feminists calling the shots, and different people have different ideas of how to go about things. Some of them will be wrong, and wrong ideas will gain traction anyway. These days, I see it as growing pains on the way to becoming a less horrible society.

On free speech: you have the right to hold your opinions, and to voice them in general. You have no right to demand that anyone listen to you, or that anyone give you space to speak. Even the law is more nuanced than people think: harassment is a crime, despite the first amendment.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#104

Post by masklinn »

dawnbreez wrote: post #93

I always wondered why people who take offense at what someone else says make such a big deal of it. Tell 'em you don't like X, block 'em, and boom, you're done. No need to make 15btweets explaining just how much you hate [Scapegoat off the week here].

> Tell 'em you don't like X, block 'em, and boom, you're done.

Until X start automating the creation of new account and spamming your specifically because you blocked them of course.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#105

Post by capitalsigma »

tremon wrote: post #92
capitalsigma wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but rather that the discussion/communication So you mean he's not offended --- rather, the other people violated some universal standard of behavior?

Next time, try a little honesty. There's a lot more to feelings than simply "offended". Fry's post read as disheartened, emotionally drained. Not offended. That this post tries to frame Fry's post as some kind of veiled offense and then smugly points out the inconsistency in that, is quite insulting in my eyes. Even if it were accurate about Fry's message, it would still be immensely rude to me to belittle another pe…

> disheartened, emotionally drained

So he wasn't offended, he just had his feelings hurt?

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#106

Post by tremon »

capitalsigma wrote: post #105
tremon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next time, try a little honesty. There's a lot more to feelings than simply "offended". Fry's post read as disheartened, emotionally drained. Not offended. That this post tries to frame Fry's post as some kind of veiled offense and then smugly points out the inconsistency in that, is quite insulting in my eyes. Even if it were accurate about Fry's message, it would still be immensely rude to me to belittle another pe…

> disheartened, emotionally drained So he wasn't offended, he just had his feelings hurt?

no

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#107

Post by jerf »

bradleyjg wrote: post #41
jerf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've made a minor hobby of studying how communities are formed by the technical structure of the community, and what interactions they enable. The control of visibility is actually a subtle art, and a lot of things like Twitter or Facebook start with an initial design that is quite unsubtle that works at first, but scales poorly. I'm not convinced Twitter is fixable as-is. The most obvious technical solution is to do…

I can't say I've made a study of it, but I've certainly thought about it. I'd be interested in your thoughts on reddit style voting with visible points and reordering. In my observation each of those things are detrimental, at least with respect to community building and maintenance.

It seems to scale to medium size OK (several thousand lurkers, ~100 regular posters and a steady stream of drive-bys), though I observe even a medium sized subreddit doesn't feel all that different than a Usenet forum of the same size. Voting may let the community get a little larger than just a threaded conversation, especially because it can distribute spam filtering, but I'm not sure it's that meaningfully different in the end.

I'm also not convinced it's terribly detrimental. Most of the accusations against vote systems are true of threaded forums in general. Group think develops, regardless. People can be hounded out of a community, regardless, for the same set of reasons. It seems to me the real key is the use of a threading system in the first place, rather than the votes attached to the threads.

It may be fair to say that threaded voting enables the largest communities I know about. At the scale they break down, I don't know anything that works. I've never seen a mechanism for having a tightly-knit single community of larger size without being what most of us would consider a community fail.

By contrast, threaded vs. flat is a vital change.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#108

Post by dawnbreez »

masklinn wrote: post #104
dawnbreez wrote: post #93

I always wondered why people who take offense at what someone else says make such a big deal of it. Tell 'em you don't like X, block 'em, and boom, you're done. No need to make 15btweets explaining just how much you hate [Scapegoat off the week here].

> Tell 'em you don't like X, block 'em, and boom, you're done. Until X start automating the creation of new account and spamming your specifically because you blocked them of course.

At that point, the whole conflict has become ridiculous. Who has the time to create a bot that automates creating accounts to spam, say, the N-word?

That's not even accounting for captchas.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#109

Post by tremon »

hyperpape wrote: post #99
tremon wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really. Hurting someone's feelings (oh noes, he used directed cursewords!) is not the same as invalidating feelings.

So you're saying his response to those people is "your feelings are valid, I understand why you are offended by my comments" or is it closer to "your feelings are dumb--you're only mad because you didn't think about what I said?" (Note also the other comment where I said I think he's right. I don't really talk about feelings being "valid" that much, but I don't think his critics' feelings are "valid" with regard to t…

Maybe it's just that our definitions don't match. When I think of "invalidating" someone's feelings, I think of downplaying them, refusing to acknowledge them, or even denying someone's right to have that feeling. Think of comments like "oh, you're just PMS'ing", "don't fuss, how can you make this into such a big deal?" or "you're white/black/male, so you're not allowed to feel insulted about this".

No, what I mean is not closer to "your feelings are dumb" either. Telling someone to fuck off is communicating that their /presence/, or their /attitude/ is unwanted. It doesn't directly attack their feelings at all. It may be uncaring, and the recipient may still be hurt by it, but it's a far cry from denying people their right to feel.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#110

Post by masklinn »

dawnbreez wrote: post #108
masklinn wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tell 'em you don't like X, block 'em, and boom, you're done. Until X start automating the creation of new account and spamming your specifically because you blocked them of course.

At that point, the whole conflict has become ridiculous. Who has the time to create a bot that automates creating accounts to spam, say, the N-word? That's not even accounting for captchas.

> Who has the time to create a bot that automates creating accounts to spam, say, the N-word?

Quite a few people apparently, and you only need one to do that and make it available to everyone else.

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