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Everyone’s offended these days

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Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#61

Post by szxnyc »

theseatoms wrote: post #19
Shog9 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you ever know? You can judge actions, moderate actions, reward actions... But feelings are harder to identify. Which was sorta the point of this article, I guess. There's a good chance that everyone is offended... So, what are we gonna do about that? If everyone is offended - and if we stop trying to sort out who has a "right" to be and who doesn't - then these notions that some bad behavior is justified ki…

Yes, I agree that other people's feelings are hard to know. (Possibly unknowable.) I just can't recall ever in my life having been offended, so I'm skeptical.

I'm with you. I just naturally accept that everyone has their own opinion and it doesn't have to match mine.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#62

Post by cconroy »

wavefunction wrote: post #50
cconroy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know Fry but he isn't handling things as well as Dawkins does it seems. Dawkins has a hilarious video of him reading the most hateful tweets. You have to be careful. Some of the people who complain about others being offended all the time are the biggest babies. [Edit] If he is leaving bc it is no fun anymore that is an excellent reason.

Dawkins and everyone else in the world are certainly entitled to express themselves, but there are also repercussions for that expression. He's said some rather dim-witted stuff about religions in general and some religions in particular and while I will defend to the death his right to say those things, it doesn't reflect all that well on his person imo.

What is the worst thing he said that was dim-witted that you remember off hand? Generally curious, he defends his positions rather well I believe.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#63

Post by Shog9 »

theseatoms wrote: post #19
Shog9 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you ever know? You can judge actions, moderate actions, reward actions... But feelings are harder to identify. Which was sorta the point of this article, I guess. There's a good chance that everyone is offended... So, what are we gonna do about that? If everyone is offended - and if we stop trying to sort out who has a "right" to be and who doesn't - then these notions that some bad behavior is justified ki…

Yes, I agree that other people's feelings are hard to know. (Possibly unknowable.) I just can't recall ever in my life having been offended, so I'm skeptical.

Well, the other problem here is that you can't know for sure how you come off to others; again, they can't know whether your actions reflect ACTUAL offense any more than you can know the motivation for theirs; we can take you at your word, or decide that your actions are what matters and react accordingly.

Going back to the article, we have no way of knowing if Fry was ACTUALLY offended by the response he got on twitter. Perhaps he is as dispassionate as his post alleges. But he's walking a path well-worn by the offended.

If I had a nickel for every person who ranted about some perceived slight, words dripping with the common indications of hurt and ire, while repeatedly assuring readers that they were perfectly calm...

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#64

Post by Goronmon »

gambiting wrote: post #13

Well, the author's suggestion that everything is fine, trolls can be ignored and Fry is somehow hypocritical with being fed up with trolls and offended people is really something that I cannot agree with. Twitter, by its very own format, encourages the worst in the human behaviour. Those who shout loudest get the most visibility, and it has the very real potential to destroy lives and encourage mob justice which is j…

Well, the author's suggestion that everything is fine, trolls can be ignored and Fry is somehow hypocritical with being fed up with trolls and offended people is really something that I cannot agree with.

This is actually the opposite of what the post says.

The subtext here is that cretinism is acceptable, but being a target is not. If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door. What kind of reasoning is that, and what kind of society does anyone think it’s going to create?

That is a paragraph from later in the article.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#66

Post by ftwynn »

For those that didn't read the article, I think the crux of it is here:

> The subtext here is that cretinism is acceptable, but being a target is not. If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door. What kind of reasoning is that, and what kind of society does anyone think it’s going to create?

It's almost a call for more putting the blame in the right place, given that Twitter's sheer volume can take a grumble from an off-color joke at a party and multiply it by a thousand fold into something much harder to bear.

Whether the solution is technical or social, it seems like a real problem to me. We haven't had the ability to unify with similar voices in large numbers so quickly before. It should be unsurprising that when we do so for the first time we're a bit indiscriminate and heavy-handed with the power.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#67

Post by jackcosgrove »

cconroy wrote: post #40
krig wrote: post #33

This is a complete misunderstanding of what that quote from Stephen Fry is saying. Of course people get offended. Everyone get offended all the time! So what? He's doing exactly the right thing: He isn't having fun using Twitter, so he stops using it. He's not claiming that getting offended is somehow beneath him, he's saying that getting offended is no big deal. It's everyone else who is making a big deal out of him…

I dont know Fry but he isn't handling things as well as Dawkins does it seems. Dawkins has a hilarious video of him reading the most hateful tweets. You have to be careful. Some of the people who complain about others being offended all the time are the biggest babies. [Edit] If he is leaving bc it is no fun anymore that is an excellent reason.

Why does someone even need to justify to others their decision to leave Twitter? Why do they need to handle it well? Social media sucks more because complete strangers feel they have the right the dissect someone else's behavior from thousands of miles away, and pass judgment upon them for violating rules that the target may not even know exist, more than because some people are "babies" and can't stand the nitpicking.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#68

Post by Goronmon »

tomp wrote: post #52
s_kilk wrote: post #39

> The subtext here is that cretinism is acceptable, but being a target is not. > If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door. Sums it up perfectly.

> If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door. Stephen Fry wasn't "kicking" anyone. On the other hand, people who are offended usually do, they viciously attack others (even get them fired!).

>Stephen Fry wasn't "kicking" anyone.

I don't think the author was implying that Stephen Fry was the "kicker" in the quote above.

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#69

Post by [deleted] »

hyperpape wrote: post #56
_xhok wrote: post #14

There's a bit of nuance needed re: the paragraphs near the start. Offended people tend to expect others to cater to them. Stephen doesn't; he's simply explaining why people are wrong: for treating "I'm offended" as something that should be pandered to. That isn't the same. The author seems to be suggesting that because everyone thinks their behavior is universal and objective, one cannot justifiably make this claim,…

"Maybe; but Fry never tries to invalidate others' feelings." "“Will all you sanctimonious fuckers fuck the fuck off Jenny Beavan is a friend and joshing is legitimate." Really?

[deleted]

Re: Everyone’s offended these days

#70

Post by populacesoho »

Because we live in an age where real morals have been lost sight of, since deterministic faith in the correctness of any authority has been lost sight of ( thanks, Post Modernism ! ), people are scrambling to fabricate the authority of whatever they can grab nearest them ( since we all need a compass, even if it's just a finger drawing in the sand ) -- so it works to be prepared that you live in a world where someone else's subjective interpretation of their own offence taken at whatever they select, and the fallacy they delude themselves with that such offence makes them a fake victim of some fabricated "wrong", which they make to therefore mean that they are "right", does, they believe, afford them, what passes for moral value, these days. And, mostly, this incorrect belief, passes the smell test, and "seems legit", in contemporary discourse. As long as you claim you have been offended, you are fucking-completely-morally-right, so long as you can own the narrative on why you're a bigger victim than any other contenders for the crown of self-appointed righteous one. Welcome to the Age of the Biggest Fake Victim. Of course, the real evil starts when these self proclaimed victims use their self-anointed righteous status ( face-painted on themselves in the authority-skeptical moral vacuum of the present ), to pretend to justify whatever ways they try to harm others. Wait, are we talking about terrorists who pretend they are full fake-justified, because, of course, they are victims of the West's oppression -- or were we talking about just some fake-left liberal arts student at Cornell who's claiming to have been permanently damaged by whatever "offensive" idea their professor happened to raise in class? Or is that propensity to anoint the self proclaimed "offended fake victim" the status of "moral mother superior" really the same evil unworkable force behind both of these apparitions? You decide, dear reader. #CoddlingOfTheAmericanMind, #FakeVictimClaimingAbusesRealVictims

-- I value my tiny little accumulation of rep here. Please don't down vote unless you really, really thought it through and mean it. And if in any way you agree, upvote, you know...to protect me. ;)

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