Principia Discordia

They were the idol, I was devoted.
Then they strayed into discomfort,
now they're CANCELLED.
now their art means NOTHING.

Through 'Share' Sermons and 'Like' Pulpits, we assemble like clergy.
We watch you like fireworks, like the sermon on the Mount Rushmore.
We made these boots for you, size 100, they must fit you.

You say the things we want you to say.
Stay on course, you are perfect
reenforce and support me, you are perfect
give us the sequel, you are perfect
We made you, monster, and we can break you

We worship gods, not humans
If your hand shakes as you draw the line between up and down
the eddy will twist into a vortex
your head will spin in exorcism
we throw the clothes that smell like you in a trash can, light it on fire, and sob

The thumbs up are paparrazi now, following you to your car, chasing you through the tunnel
don't be human don't be human don't be human
faster and faster, the double yellow line thrashes back and forth like a snake
We crash at top speed into a tweet you made five years ago
the age of fools

Now the chase is over, we righteously unfollow
we are righteously the crowd, the gallows, the passion

A parade in your dishonor
Like some defeated Gothic King
still living, now silent

Someone will stand atop your warm corpse like a soap box
Calling Out a euology, wreathed with paparrazi
you will not rest in peace. you will be forgotten.
you will diminish, move out to the country,
haunted by the aftertaste of ambrosia
no one cares about you anymore

How could you do this to us?
Repentance is for mortals, not gods
maybe you'll get one more moment in the sublimelight
which is not about your art, it's your apology tour.
With the stage lights focused like lasers
you will be naked and blemished,
disgusting and shameful.

I tell all my friends I will never enjoy you again,
and if my friends relate to you,
fuck them, too

sitting in the audience, clothed in unimportance
our blemishes and our shame are private
the pulpit is empty--we have emptied it, you and I
I call out another motherfucker
to viral applause
standing before the cathedral
purifying myself
for ascent

Where's the "upvote" button on this "forum" thing?

I like your word sublimelight. This was very thought-provoking Cram! I'm very comfortable just being mortal and a mostly unknown, but I think I get where you're going with this drive to some kind of godhood archetype peer pressure.

I'm still not gonna listen to R Kelly, though.

yeah but point of order - R. Kelly's issue is not as trivial as human error, misreading the crowd, or making a bad tweet during a less progressive time.

It's kind of shocking how fast all sympathy can be pulled from a single infraction. Torch-wielding mobs have been mocked in public for decades, yet nobody seems to remember that when they are waiting in line to light their torch. I fear the internet is making us collectively sociopathic.

Yeah, I know precisely where Cram is coming from.

What I find almost as interesting as this "cancel culture" of dropping celebrities like a hat at the tiniest slip up, is the fact that becoming a gasoline bartender and serving up the people's grenade isn't always the way this shit goes down. Lots of mobs do grab their pitchforks and chant for blood, but other fans come rushing to defend their god-people; they internalize the "you are perfect" mantra so much that they don't even get hypocritical and attack the person for screwing up, they just venerate them even harder. Others, on what I think of as the flip-side of this phenomenon, will fervently support people in spite of the fact that (or even because) they fuck up real hard, real often. Just look at all the people who continue to support [insert famous sleazebag here]; they become blind to the mistakes, or even have those mistakes twisted into something positive by their brains because "This guy is so good, though!".

This is a tough one for me to post about in a short, to the point way. I keep wandering off into the depths of the forest of tangential asides on the slopes of Mt Abrupt Subject Change.

I feel there is value in holding shitty people accountable for their shitty behavior. Before a certain degree of shittiness has been passed, however, it's more valuable to leave the door open for potential redemption.

If anyone from AT LEAST the age of 21 upward can genuinely say their entire internet history and history of real life interactions could be brought into the present day and no one would find a single bit of it questionable, come out and admit you're the second coming of fucking Christ already, we are all sick and tired of waiting.

I have to be honest, when I hear about people I like accused of shitty things, my feelings about them do change.

I'm not a complete fool, so I know how to weight my priors in light of new information (note, I didn't say evidence).  Sometimes it rises to the level of "ain't fucking with you anymore", sometimes it doesn't.

There's also a difference between "famous" people and a social circle.  I was very disappointed when I heard Chris Pratt not only found Jesus, but his church is anti LGBTQ+.  I'm still going to see films he's in, but I'm not going to actively seek them out.  And Parks and Rec doesn't have the glow it once had for me (which sucks, because there are so many good actors in it: Plaza, Retta, Offerman, Pohler).

But Louis CK?  Fuck that guy.  His show Louie was amazing.  I mean, some of the better television I've seen.  But like hell I'm going to watch it now, or see anything of his in the future.  Same with Hardwick.

But then there's people like Dan Harmon.  He got called out early in #MeToo, and you know what he did?  He apologized.  Not fake-apologized, either.  He was genuinely contrite, asked for forgiveness to both the woman who accused him, the cast and crew of his shows, and the fans.  Then he shut up and listened to what he could do to make the situation better.  And then he did them.

I've only very rarely heard of instances where someone's IRL friends or immediate online social circle ("Top 10" in MySpace parlance) have canceled one another, and it's usually because of something really bad.  The instances of "I heard a rumor that person is bad and you're bad if you support them" is typically reserved for the friends-of-friends and total strangers. 

I knew what about these terrible people though? was coming. I admit--what's missing from my OP is a bit about how there are good reasons we want to do this and sometimes it's an important part of the immune system.

Louis CK really had an opportunity to turn it around, and failed. I think it would do our whole culture a lot of good if we saw some people turn it around properly.



I have a different social circle experience... I don't want to go into details, but it's basically the weaponization of #MeToo energy. In short, I've watched a friend get unfairly dragged. There is no quarter given for apology or healing, and no accusations have been made in a public forum where they can be addressed. And our organization has suffered for it.



Part of the motivation for writing the OP was watching the crowd turn on Nathan Pyle, the guy who draws this comic:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dz9nY_jWwAEJQtp.jpg)

The dude made a pro-life tweet in 2017, and god, some of the people on my friends list got real upset about it.  I saw a bunch of posts where people jumped on a soap box to denounce him and declare his comic dead. Like his religious affiliation is some huge betrayal, like it totally sours these non-political feel-good comics about cute aliens.

The next day, someone else crawled through all of his posts over the last two years, and found tons of stuff that fills in the rest of the canvas - he supports Black Lives Matter, is anti-trump, calls out hypocritical christians who lack compassion, and generally supports left wing politics. In the overall calculus of things, he seems alright.

I found myself weirdly annoyed that people got hung up on this one piece of data, excluding everything else. CANCELLED.


in part, it sits weird with me because I watched this video the other day, where a panel of 10 women were debating about feminism. The ones that didn't identify as feminists were asked -- why not?

A few of them said that their pro-life stance led to them being publicly called out and rejected from feminist spaces. That the current incarnation of feminism is only for lefties. Is that ideal? It really made me think.

It's interesting to me. I keep thinking about Marshal McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message" -- the structure of social media filters us into finer and finer islands. What does that do for the efficacy of political movements?

At a certain point, alchemically speaking, separation must be followed by coagulation. In the post-trump years, we will need to build coalitions or things will remain as they are.



And look - I make art. I run events. I have weird opinions. I'm also an idiot. I make mistakes. I don't want to live in a world where in order to make art successfully, I have to hide everything about myself and put forward this totally sanitized beige radio-friendly exterior. When I look at my favorite artists, writers, etc--they are all flawed shitbags. It's the human condition. After failure, I think there is room for acknowledgement and growth. I don't see that happening in a lot of #CancelCulture.

But here's the thing -- Pyle tweeted out his personal outlook a day or so ago: Personally anti-choice, believes in a separation of church and state, votes Democratic, etc etc. 


[Insert "and just like that" meme]


I'm sorry your friend went through that.  I hope they find a better social circle.

Quote from: LMNO on April 10, 2019, 02:33:25 PM
But here's the thing -- Pyle tweeted out his personal outlook a day or so ago: Personally anti-choice, believes in a separation of church and state, votes Democratic, etc etc. 

Why should he have to?

He was forced to clarify his position based on backlash of an out of context tweet from 2 years ago as if he needs absolution or needs to justify himself to an attention deficit public court who have declared themselves an authority on these things and do so badly.

Nothing he has said in the last couple of days is new, everyone familiar with the nuance of his character would not have needed it.

Instead these people felt they were entitled to a position of moral superiority on this person without any responsibility to look into the finer details of his character. Instead people form opinions on soundbites and pass judgement on someones career until they lose interest and move onto the next thing that gives them a dopamine hit from being angry about.
The terminology around this gets ugly, outrage culture, etc.

The conservatives call this a witch hunt, which is far too generous. The witch hunters were thorough.

If I ever have to act as a public figure or heaven forbid someone who creates for public consumption, I will feel obliged to validate everything I do with lovecraftian narration from Darkest Dungeon: "In time you will know the tragic extent of my failings"

Yes, it would be wonderful if humans in general were not prone to lazy assumptions based upon incomplete information, especially in situations where they could make themselves feel morally superior.

It's a kink.

Anti-choice is a killer for me. That's "I don't want to be associated with you remotely" tier for me personally and I'm not making apologies for it. (Note: I live under a rock in a box in a cave at the bottom of a hole I dug in the Marianas Trench and this is the first I heard of this Pyle dude at all.)

But I reserve "and fuck your fans too" for Nazis, pedos, terfs, collaborators and other horrid scum without evidence, and any sort of sexual harassment with evidence. That's the line I draw. Some people can look past some shittiness, and some levels of shittiness don't rise to the point where being able to look past them means you're inevitably mired in them. Most levels, in fact.

And hell, there's even just "I have emotional investment and there's no legit evidence, so I'm going to let it slide for now". I do that myself. Sometimes there's not enough for me to say "fuck this" to the things I love yet. I'm prepared, I'm capable, but for a certain amount of love for some things, I need a certain amount of leverage to pry me loose from it first.

Short of trying to hang on to R. Kelly or Burzum or some other awful, terrible, eternally tainted fecal matter, these are things that people should be forgiven for, even if you can't forgive the public figures that those people enjoy, I think.

I feel like a terrible person without fitting any of those categories and so I feel compassion to them.

How horrifying would it be to see your life crumble around you just because you were brainwashed wrong as a child?

If you are rejected by the society for your views, you tend to go back to the place you got them from, because there you are at least understood.

Then they can paste on the next layer of shit.

If you're seriously trying to tell me Nazis, pedos and terfs deserve my compassion, you can get fucked by a semitrailer, sideways, at freeway speeds. They deserve mountaineering crampons, the metal bear trap looking kind, to the jaw.

If you aren't saying that, correct yourself my dude.

Quote from: Con-troll on April 11, 2019, 04:15:21 AM
I feel like a terrible person without fitting any of those categories and so I feel compassion to them.

Your priorities are fucked, and you should feel bad.

Quote from: nullified on April 11, 2019, 04:37:48 AM
If you're seriously trying to tell me Nazis, pedos and terfs deserve my compassion, you can get fucked by a semitrailer, sideways, at freeway speeds. They deserve mountaineering crampons, the metal bear trap looking kind, to the jaw.

If you aren't saying that, correct yourself my dude.

All those are scales. When exactly does a person start to deserve bad things to start happening to them?

Best example I can think of is te #metoo and the conversation around that. The side accusing people of rape have been educated enough to realize that rape isn't always a violent gangbang in some  dark streetcorner, that it can be much more subtle, but for the side being accused that is just the image the word "rape" tends to evoke.

In my country at least, the masculine culture is all for castrating the rapists in a gory public displays, but if we at the same time want to have the word include all sexual interaction without consent, things get very messy very fast.

Do you see the chasm?

All sexual interaction without consent can cause /serious fucking damage/. All of it. It might look "minor" to you but I'm extremely fucked up over some of that "minor" shit.

Keep digging that fucking hole, sparky. I'll gladly bury you when you've gotten it fucking deep enough.

Quote from: Con-troll on April 11, 2019, 07:16:05 AM

Quote from: nullified on April 11, 2019, 04:37:48 AM
If you're seriously trying to tell me Nazis, pedos and terfs deserve my compassion, you can get fucked by a semitrailer, sideways, at freeway speeds. They deserve mountaineering crampons, the metal bear trap looking kind, to the jaw.

If you aren't saying that, correct yourself my dude.

All those are scales. When exactly does a person start to deserve bad things to start happening to them?

Best example I can think of is te #metoo and the conversation around that. The side accusing people of rape have been educated enough to realize that rape isn't always a violent gangbang in some  dark streetcorner, that it can be much more subtle, but for the side being accused that is just the image the word "rape" tends to evoke.

In my country at least, the masculine culture is all for castrating the rapists in a gory public displays, but if we at the same time want to have the word include all sexual interaction without consent, things get very messy very fast.

Do you see the chasm?

I see you devaluing victims.  Does that count as a chasm?

Because sexual interaction without consent is sexual misconduct AT BEST (Biden), but is in fact usually rape.  And here you are, defending that shit.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Also I just caught the "all those are scales" thing.

So how many kids need to be molested before someone is firmly on the pedo end of the scale you fucking imbecile?

How many "Sieg Heil"s and "Juden raus"s are required to make a Nazi?

You are human fucking waste. Thanks for letting us see how utterly contemptible you are.

There's a fucking scale to being a child molester you guys! Uncle BadTouch is practically a motherfucking saint by Con-troll's standards! There's room for forgiveness and growth!

All those soldiers in the fucking death camps in 1945 were just going their job! They would have been stuck in the shit themselves if they hadn't!

It's almost like someone didn't realize that moral relativism taken too far makes you a codpiece stitched together out of rotten pork! How fucking enlightening is that, don't you guys see that you're hurting /innocent fucking people/ when you just take every goosestepping skinhead fuckwit and paint them all as nazis?

This shit pisses me off like none other. "Scales" to rape, pedophilia, fascism. What the fuck. You ought to be hounded through the fucking streets by rabid oxen for being such a callous fucking moron.

Fully agree with you on that.

You are nazi by telling a holocaust joke, or by actually murdering people you deem genetically inferior.

You are pedophile by fantasizing about minors, or by ritual sacrificing them.

You are terf by being terrified by phallos.

It's like we are trying to say, that when you cross the line and get labeled, THERE IS NO RETURN, you'll end up committing the extreme example of whatever mental disability you inhabit anyways, so you should be treated like you already did.

Quote from: Con-troll on April 11, 2019, 07:50:40 AM
Fully agree with you on that.

You are nazi by telling a holocaust joke, or by actually murdering people you deem genetically inferior.

You are pedophile by fantasizing about minors, or by ritual sacrificing them.

You are terf by being terrified by phallos.

It's like we are trying to say, that when you cross the line and get labeled, THERE IS NO RETURN, you'll end up committing the extreme example of whatever mental disability you inhabit anyways, so you should be treated like you already did.

My dude.

Shut the fuck up.

I told him he was digging the hole. He hits bedrock and what's he do? Orders some fucking thermite charges.

Quote from: nullified on April 11, 2019, 07:57:13 AM
I told him he was digging the hole. He hits bedrock and what's he do? Orders some fucking thermite charges.

Yeah, well, this ain't the first time we've had someone kick the door in and announce that they're trash.

No, it's the first time I've seen someone so fucking determined to be the counterpoint to a thread by way of example though.

oops

Quote from: Con-troll on April 11, 2019, 07:59:47 AM
oops

I hate to say it after all these years, but I smell poptard.

Aw, I hope not. I want to see if Cram puts on his "be-nice-to-the-shithead" hat or not. I'm guessing he's about 70% of the way to where even nice-hat Cram will take a rancid dump on his open eyes, and that's always an incredible sight.

The brown-orange bromine fumes, the greenish, oatmeal textured paste that you need a rocksaw to chisel off of the floor... that smell, like someone left some fish out in the desert for a week then doused it in vinegar and paint thinner to try and hide the reek.

Why is it I have to keep thinking about the victims?

They tend not to have the power to stop the abuse.

The tragedy hits them.
Breaks them.
For no fault of their own.

THERE WAS NOTHING THE VICTIM COULD'VE DONE DIFFERENTLY.

If you say there was you are victimblaming.

I KNOW they feel bad.
It is OBVIOUS.
They were violated.

Why not take the jump and think about what makes the abuser feel bad?
Before they've done anything.
Before they do more.

What are they running from?
What drives them to EXTREME ACTIONS to ease their suffering?

THERE WAS A LOT THE ABUSER SHOULD'VE DONE DIFFERENTLY.

And the abuser is their enviroment.
All the labels sticked onto them.

...

I'm probably still prioritizing wrong or devaluing the victim.

Victims are the symptom, not the cause.


Come on, bash my face in with that brick, I know you want to.

Con-troll, you have a shovel, and you keep digging.

Avoiding the carbon monoxide leak and trying to circle back to the point on cancel culture (I really like this phrase) and run through examples in my head.
Last year Ireland had a very emotional vote on abortion, becoming the first country to legalise it by democratic vote, there was of course uglyness but not as much as I was expecting. The government did a good job of heading it off at the pass and said "This will be a divisive issue and when debating it with family or friends remember they are also coming from an emotionally charged place".

I had a lot of disagreement with my mother over this, she is and remains anti-abortion coming from a deeply catholic background and that irreconcilable position that it is murder, right up to the last day I was convinced she was going to vote against, she surprised me though and voted to remove the law blocking it. She still maintains she is anti abortion but didn't believe it was the place of the the state to legislate on that and that it was a personal matter.
I have seen others who have lost close friends over this on either side of the debate but for the most part approaching it with empathy and understanding of the other persons position (even if you think it is deluded) was the only way constructive discussion could happen on this.
Public figures who came out in support of allowing abortion including our health minister (who had to give a stance as it was a referendum related to his area) was not vilified, didn't have nasty tricks on funding or personal abuse or protesters showing up outside his house, it was a show of restraint by the anti-abortion side that in other  countries would have attempted to destroy him.

The second example of the attention deficit judgement was Liam Neeson and the racist comment a few months back. A sound byte came out in the media of Neeson saying that after a friend of his was raped by a black lad, he went out with a gun looking to shoot the first black lad he saw. Media outrage ensues twitter activists calling for a boycott of his films. You can probably see where this is going.
The full context of this was of course something different, even though the full interview was available to anyone who wanted to watch it. He was describing destructive and irrational impulses for a revenge film he was working on, the story was an example of something he deeply regretted and openly admits was coming from a place of ignorance and racial bias. Northern Ireland in the seventies and eighties was a deeply racist, xenophobic and awful place.
But no, no one is allowed to grow as person, or to ever have made a mistake and god forbid they ever openly admit that they were.

The last one Nullified is one you might be familiar with, and it's not one I am going to defend. Graham Linehan, the writer of two of the best comedy shows of all time, is a transphobe and a dickhead on twitter. I'm not going to talk about the separation between the artist and their art because that is a slightly different argument (though you will get me to stop watching The IT crowd and Father Ted when you pry the box sets from my cold dead hand).
This started months ago where he tweeted some stuff about gender binary beliefs and the LGBTQ responded with a mix of reasonable responses and the far louder immediate outcry to boycott him and a mix of personal abuse.
If he had left it at that, I wouldn't agree with his views but I would have been supportive of him. Until this point him and Pyle have bit of a parallel both vilified because of their personal views to a disproportionate backlash.
But oh no, Linehan didn't leave it there, he doubled down, singled out transgender people responding to him and came out with some pretty disgusting abuse of them. He has to this day not stopped posting this abuse or sharing pretty disgusting articles that are very anti-LGBTQ. He leaned in to it and now comes across as a 1920's mustachio twirling villain who ties transwomen to railroad tracks.

So I draw the comparison, Pyle holds pro-life views but in the wider context seems like a decent person, he holds views I wouldn't agree with but so do a lot of the weirdo creators out there that I enjoy. He has been unfairly slated in a way that undermines this form of activism as a legitimate source of social change.

For every legitimate Weinstein and Linehan there is Neeson or Pyle getting caught up in the rage machine which for me demonstrates more walls going up to block any social change for the better.
People need to look at the finer detail before they take to arms or they will invalidate their cause regardless of what it is.

That shit was in my head, you are strangers in the internet, you can have it, I need to get it OUT.

Quote from: Con-troll on April 11, 2019, 08:45:07 AM
Why is it I have to keep thinking about the victims?

They tend not to have the power to stop the abuse.

The tragedy hits them.
Breaks them.
For no fault of their own.

THERE WAS NOTHING THE VICTIM COULD'VE DONE DIFFERENTLY.

If you say there was you are victimblaming.

I KNOW they feel bad.
It is OBVIOUS.
They were violated.

Why not take the jump and think about what makes the abuser feel bad?
Before they've done anything.
Before they do more.

What are they running from?
What drives them to EXTREME ACTIONS to ease their suffering?

THERE WAS A LOT THE ABUSER SHOULD'VE DONE DIFFERENTLY.

And the abuser is their enviroment.
All the labels sticked onto them.

...

I'm probably still prioritizing wrong or devaluing the victim.

Victims are the symptom, not the cause.


Come on, bash my face in with that brick, I know you want to.

Since i havent seen a reference to Hitler in a while and we need to adhere to Godwin's Law here it goes:

Hitler had a shit life, got influenced and mislead by his time's antisemitism, and he was rejected from art school several times... yes, a "victim" of his time and circumstances.

But when you "turn" from victim to perpetrator, you absolutely deserve no sympathy or mercy, unless its within the boundaries of reforming. Then you need to be put down like a rabid dog, so you dont infect or kill others.

If you cant agree with this youre just an apologist and complicit.

I had no idea about any of this stuff, Faust. I lead a very sheltered life as a sort of survival mechanism. I have enough to worry about without policing the lives of rich white people I don't know and will never meet.

Let's start with Pyle. Let me be /very/ clear. I am saying Pyle's position is personally morally objectionable to me, and having any association with him would make me hate myself. But his position is one that is not /innately, specifically/ evil. It can be used for evil, but there are morally neutral formulations of it, some which have no easy answers at all.

A Pyle like figure popping up in my stuff would entail abandoning any interest in media related to them. That's it. That's the whole extent. Sure, I'd explain why if asked, but given a relatively quiet and non-stupid reaction to the backlash from that figure (as seems to have happened here) there's no point in bringing up "oh you know that guy did X" or whatever the fuck every time I see his name. It goes as far as "oh, I don't care about this anymore."

A Neeson like figure is different. I feel there is no defense possible for his actions, so I'm glad he agrees with me. He should be used to communicate how to handle "becoming a non shitty person" and shown an appropriate level of contempt (which basically amounts to "never let him live it down", in the sense of not letting a friend live down a particularly stupid stunt — don't let it be forgotten, but do forgive). This is my opinion, but I do think this is the ideal "public" response as well. You need to reinforce that not being a shitneck in the first place is the ideal to reach, and losing your shitneck nature later on down the line is an admirable event, but ultimately lands you, at best, runner up. I wouldn't even cut a Neeson like figure out of my media diet: they did the right thing eventually, and not as part of a halting, hemming-and-hawing obvious PR blunderbuss approach, just being honest with themselves and everyone else. That's worth quite a bit to me.

And a Linehan figure is the one I would go far, far out of my way to make miserable. Anyone making excuses for that kind of behavior deserves similar treatment. Some things are unacceptable.

Quote from: The Johnny on April 11, 2019, 09:35:29 AM

Quote from: Con-troll on April 11, 2019, 08:45:07 AM
Why is it I have to keep thinking about the victims?

They tend not to have the power to stop the abuse.

The tragedy hits them.
Breaks them.
For no fault of their own.

THERE WAS NOTHING THE VICTIM COULD'VE DONE DIFFERENTLY.

If you say there was you are victimblaming.

I KNOW they feel bad.
It is OBVIOUS.
They were violated.

Why not take the jump and think about what makes the abuser feel bad?
Before they've done anything.
Before they do more.

What are they running from?
What drives them to EXTREME ACTIONS to ease their suffering?

THERE WAS A LOT THE ABUSER SHOULD'VE DONE DIFFERENTLY.

And the abuser is their enviroment.
All the labels sticked onto them.

...

I'm probably still prioritizing wrong or devaluing the victim.

Victims are the symptom, not the cause.


Come on, bash my face in with that brick, I know you want to.

Since i havent seen a reference to Hitler in a while and we need to adhere to Godwin's Law here it goes:

Hitler had a shit life, got influenced and mislead by his time's antisemitism, and he was rejected from art school several times... yes, a "victim" of his time and circumstances.

But when you "turn" from victim to perpetrator, you absolutely deserve no sympathy or mercy, unless its within the boundaries of reforming. Then you need to be put down like a rabid dog, so you dont infect or kill others.

If you cant agree with this youre just an apologist and complicit.

Guess I'll keep on derailing and ridiculing myself.

Hitler is quite an extreme example. He was literally the most nazi nazi who had will, determination, and the conditions to carry out his sick fantasies. Most nazis I've come to contact with are the ones contaminated by shitty memes, and then they reach this edginess threshold, after which people around them start to push them away, towards the more radical viewpoint.

It's not that they are beyond saving, one can wake up from coma speaking only french for fucks sakes. It's just we are, probably justly, prioritizing other people. And that hurts the would-be-nazis and validates their worldview.

That's all I'm trying to say.

Quote from: nullified on April 11, 2019, 09:48:22 AM
I had no idea about any of this stuff, Faust. I lead a very sheltered life as a sort of survival mechanism. I have enough to worry about without policing the lives of rich white people I don't know and will never meet.

Exactly, and it is tied into media obsession with celebrity that these cases are kept in public attention. What I am describing here isn't reflective of anyone here or individuals, it's a process that only becomes the problem on aggregate. In fact the self sustaining nature of it would not be possible on an individual level, it requires multiple people to run away with it.
It is this mechanism that only manifests on an aggregate level that I have an issue with.

Quote
Let's start with Pyle. Let me be /very/ clear. I am saying Pyle's position is personally morally objectionable to me, and having any association with him would make me hate myself. But his position is one that is not /innately, specifically/ evil. It can be used for evil, but there are morally neutral formulations of it, some which have no easy answers at all.


A Pyle like figure popping up in my stuff would entail abandoning any interest in media related to them. That's it. That's the whole extent. Sure, I'd explain why if asked, but given a relatively quiet and non-stupid reaction to the backlash from that figure (as seems to have happened here) there's no point in bringing up "oh you know that guy did X" or whatever the fuck every time I see his name. It goes as far as "oh, I don't care about this anymore."

Sure that's fair, there is a difference though in vilifying a person for their beliefs or calling for a boycott of him, and choosing not to consume his media because it wouldn't interest you in the context of who it is coming from. The Former feeds the mechanism I described, the latter does not.

Quote
A Neeson like figure is different. I feel there is no defense possible for his actions, so I'm glad he agrees with me. He should be used to communicate how to handle "becoming a non shitty person" and shown an appropriate level of contempt (which basically amounts to "never let him live it down", in the sense of not letting a friend live down a particularly stupid stunt — don't let it be forgotten, but do forgive). This is my opinion, but I do think this is the ideal "public" response as well. You need to reinforce that not being a shitneck in the first place is the ideal to reach, and losing your shitneck nature later on down the line is an admirable event, but ultimately lands you, at best, runner up. I wouldn't even cut a Neeson like figure out of my media diet: they did the right thing eventually, and not as part of a halting, hemming-and-hawing obvious PR blunderbuss approach, just being honest with themselves and everyone else. That's worth quite a bit to me.

Yes exactly, he wasn't looking to defend the actions, nor looking for commendation on that, he was explicitly using it as a personal example of a personal failing in a story of why revenge solves nothing. In the context of the time though, Northern Ireland catholic kids in the 1980's were denied many rights and all came from impoverished backgrounds, in short they were thick as pigshit.

The fact that the perpetrator was black was what the media zoomed in on because "Neeson Racist" gets clicks. Again it ignores that he acknowledged this, but also the fact that back then racist prejudices against black people in Ireland were widespread, Ireland to it's shame was backwards for a very long time.
This comes from two places, ignorance and spread of racial xenophobic stereotypes, and that the average Irish person would not have met or interacted with any black people. In 1997 the total black population of the country was literally around 1000, in the eighties it was less than a quarter of that. That disgusting racist boogie man stereotyping didn't start to unwind until the late nineties. "It was a different time" is the argument that gets thrown out a defense of that, but it is not defensible, it was around the same period that allowed pedophilia to run rampant in the organisation of the church that most of the country was devoted to. The point is the country has moved on from that very dark point in its history.

Quote
And a Linehan figure is the one I would go far, far out of my way to make miserable. Anyone making excuses for that kind of behavior deserves similar treatment. Some things are unacceptable.

Agreed, he deserves to be challenged on his beliefs, as to abusing him online, he revels in it and is getting attention for it specifically because of the the self sustaining mechanism of people doing that on aggregate. As long as people keep feeding into his demands for attention, even if it is to get calls that we boycott him etc, it gives platform to his shitty beliefs. A pressure can be put on the media not to fund his shows which is what it looks like people were trying to do. Instead it backfired spectacularly where he was suddenly seen as a spokesperson for a debate against transpeople and was brought in to a televised debate when in truth no one should be listening to his dumb opinions. Suddenly a comedy writer with shitty beliefs is now a nasty political commentator with a platform.
It is this mechanism that is partially responsible for empowering the worst aspects of what we are seeing currently with Trump / Neo Nazi's etc. Because the Media gives time to the things that get attention, it ends up fueling this. Where Dickheads like Lenihan can use it to there advantage and gentler people like Pyle are crushed.

Quote from: Con-troll on April 11, 2019, 10:22:04 AM

Quote from: The Johnny on April 11, 2019, 09:35:29 AM
Since i havent seen a reference to Hitler in a while and we need to adhere to Godwin's Law here it goes:

Hitler had a shit life, got influenced and mislead by his time's antisemitism, and he was rejected from art school several times... yes, a "victim" of his time and circumstances.

But when you "turn" from victim to perpetrator, you absolutely deserve no sympathy or mercy, unless its within the boundaries of reforming. Then you need to be put down like a rabid dog, so you dont infect or kill others.

If you cant agree with this youre just an apologist and complicit.

Guess I'll keep on derailing and ridiculing myself.

Hitler is quite an extreme example. He was literally the most nazi nazi who had will, determination, and the conditions to carry out his sick fantasies. Most nazis I've come to contact with are the ones contaminated by shitty memes, and then they reach this edginess threshold, after which people around them start to push them away, towards the more radical viewpoint.

It's not that they are beyond saving, one can wake up from coma speaking only french for fucks sakes. It's just we are, probably justly, prioritizing other people. And that hurts the would-be-nazis and validates their worldview.

That's all I'm trying to say.

The mental image i get from all that youre saying is a codependant woman with a black eye, telling me how "i dont understand" her abusive druggie boyfriend, and how he, deep down is a good natured person that simply had a bad childhood and is going thru some troubles currently.

You cant reform someone thru hugs and kisses, love and caring if theyre coming at you with a knife.

This thing you call "edginess" can also be called "callousness", which is a lack of caring or empathy for what might happen or what the other might feel, and in most cases that also implies a lack of interest for a rational discussion, its rationalized hatred and theyre just interested in justifying their actions.

Please stop confusing victims with predators/perpretators, its like accountability doesnt exist in your world.

Okok, I get it. Pitying the zombies will most likely get me eaten.

I still want to believe there's a cure, but preventing more people from getting bitten is themore immideate concern, so no bringing test subjects to the fortress.

Quote from: Con-troll on April 11, 2019, 12:11:14 PM
Okok, I get it. Pitying the zombies will most likely get me eaten.

I still want to believe there's a cure, but preventing more people from getting bitten is themore immideate concern, so no bringing test subjects to the fortress.

This is the most amazingly dorkiest penny dropping moment I've seen.

Quote from: nullified on April 11, 2019, 08:09:29 AM
Aw, I hope not. I want to see if Cram puts on his "be-nice-to-the-shithead" hat or not. I'm guessing he's about 70% of the way to where even nice-hat Cram will take a rancid dump on his open eyes, and that's always an incredible sight.

somebody on the internet had a bad opinion so you want me to do this machismo threatening monkey thing? Detail the horrific violence I wish upon them? I'll pass--that's not my style, and it tends to make things worse.


I hate to advocate the devil, but there is a scale-----
Al Franken is not the same thing as Brock Turner.
Aziz Ansari is not the same thing as Harvey Weinstein.
People hypnotized by fascist ideology as a reaction to liberal moral outrage is not the same thing as someone who attends KKK meetings.

part of the difference is in the self awareness, the capacity to recognize an error and address it within oneself.

What role can we play in that? We can help prompt that reflection.

That's ContraPoints goal, and why her channel is so good - she doesn't lecture, she doesn't sermonize, she genuinely tries to understand where they're coming from and correct the error. She does it with honey, not vinegar. Empathy, not judgment. She doesn't trigger the defense shields. Cause that actually works.

Upthread, I mentioned how telling pro-life feminists that they are not allowed to be feminists has hastened the fracturing of feminism, in some ways decreasing its efficacy as a female coalition and causing it to sink into the quagmire of left vs right politics. It's not something you can easily generalize - not all identities deserve a place at the intersectional table. But I do think the real work gets done at the table, not across the aisle.


and I have a selfish reason for not lashing out, too -- when this board becomes a bunch of monkey screeching, following people from thread to thread and telling them to fuck off, I drift away. It creates an evironment where everybody only posts "safe" opinions and we are just patting each other on the back for being right. Yeah, some poptarts and genuine trolls do deserve that howling. One of my fav things about PD is being challenged, encountering opinions outside my own, and trying to understand where they're coming from (even if I will never agree).

lol, here I am, sermonizing -- sorry

How do you create an opening to encourage self awareness that doesn't put every victim and/or target of shitty people in danger? If you leave the door open for some things to be "on a scale" you create a /fucking dangerous/ gap in your defenses.

What you're talking about specifically above is a backdoor for concern trolls, sea lions, and a kind of troll I don't have a snappy term for that promotes exactly one tiny shitty part of a larger shitty ideology, but publicly rejects the rest of it, in an attempt to win over community members, bit by bit, to being totally shitty.



Also, since this shit is on a scale and as far as we can tell he's never "crossed a line", let's go bring Uncle BadTouch into the fold. Noble seemed like he was just misguided, right? Let pull the ban on him and invite him back. Hey, Ron Paul too. While we're at it, gnos from the IRC is an incel but he can probably be fixed, let's call him in too. How many Nazis and other scumbags have we excluded? Let's /revisit/ that list.

That sounds fucking stupid, doesn't it?

That's what it sounds like to me every time someone starts talking about pedos and rapists and Nazis being on a fucking scale. They're scum, pure and fucking simple. You cannot wash the stain of being a rapist or a kiddy fiddler off of you, and you shouldn't be able to cover the swastika tattoos or delete the "Gender-critical" from your bio either.

Some behavior is not fucking acceptable. I don't give a fuck if they become pariahs. They asked for that the second they covered themselves in dogshit and started yelling slurs. I don't care if they /can/ be saved, why would you fucking /want/ to?

So is redemption a concept of the past then?

Do we believe people can change or not? Or is it less that you don't think someone can change, you just don't care?

Personally, I believe people should be held to account for their actions, however we need to leave room for people to improve, otherwise why would they even try?

It depends on the situation. Sorry, but I don't think there should ever be redemption or forgiveness for people like Steve Bannon or Milo whatshisfuck. There is nothing they could ever do worth anyone's time or energy. Same goes for pedos - they keep trying all this shit to get away with being pedos while pretending to be decent humans (idk how many of you are familiar with the fucking "MAP" bullshit but that's fucking creepy and perfectly illustrates my point).

If you disagree with me, you're going to need to justify the damage of letting those people in before I give a single fuck about the damage of keeping them out. Only one group /asked for this shit./

Quote from: Con-troll on April 11, 2019, 09:25:52 AM
you are strangers in the internet,

And that's how we're going to stay.

Quote from: Hoopla! on April 11, 2019, 08:23:29 PM
So is redemption a concept of the past then?

Do we believe people can change or not? Or is it less that you don't think someone can change, you just don't care?

Personally, I believe people should be held to account for their actions, however we need to leave room for people to improve, otherwise why would they even try?

Looking back on things, the chance for redemption is handed out capriciously and has worked precisely once in PD history.

IRL, it's even worse.  Brock Turner got to skip the whole "taking your lumps" thing, and go straight to the "That's great, now vacate my convictions" section, while WoC go to prison for defending their own lives and the lives of their children.

NO.  Fuck that.  Fuck you.  Redemption - if it is allowed at ALL - is something you EARN, by WALKING YOUR STUPID ASS BACK INTO CIVILIZATION through ACTIONS that ameliorate the bad shit you did.

No repentance, no penance, then no fucking absolution. 

If you guys want to sit in Con-Troll's little kumbaya drum circle, feeling all squishy over how the poor ickle monsters feel, I can't stop you.  Shit, go ahead.  Have a Stephen Miller love-in. 

LET US KNOW HOW THAT WORKS OUT.

Getting weepy-eyed over active monsters is not a fucking virtue.

Quote from: Cramulus on April 11, 2019, 03:02:21 PM

Quote from: nullified on April 11, 2019, 08:09:29 AM
Aw, I hope not. I want to see if Cram puts on his "be-nice-to-the-shithead" hat or not. I'm guessing he's about 70% of the way to where even nice-hat Cram will take a rancid dump on his open eyes, and that's always an incredible sight.

somebody on the internet had a bad opinion so you want me to do this machismo threatening monkey thing? Detail the horrific violence I wish upon them? I'll pass--that's not my style, and it tends to make things worse.

*watches Nullfied go over the cliff*

Okay.

Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 11, 2019, 08:48:12 PM

Quote from: Hoopla! on April 11, 2019, 08:23:29 PM
So is redemption a concept of the past then?

Do we believe people can change or not? Or is it less that you don't think someone can change, you just don't care?

Personally, I believe people should be held to account for their actions, however we need to leave room for people to improve, otherwise why would they even try?

Looking back on things, the chance for redemption is handed out capriciously and has worked precisely once in PD history.

IRL, it's even worse.  Brock Turner got to skip the whole "taking your lumps" thing, and go straight to the "That's great, now vacate my convictions" section, while WoC go to prison for defending their own lives and the lives of their children.

NO.  Fuck that.  Fuck you.  Redemption - if it is allowed at ALL - is something you EARN, by WALKING YOUR STUPID ASS BACK INTO CIVILIZATION through ACTIONS that ameliorate the bad shit you did.

No repentance, no penance, then no fucking absolution. 

If you guys want to sit in Con-Troll's little kumbaya drum circle, feeling all squishy over how the poor ickle monsters feel, I can't stop you.  Shit, go ahead.  Have a Stephen Miller love-in. 

LET US KNOW HOW THAT WORKS OUT.

Getting weepy-eyed over active monsters is not a fucking virtue.

Thanks for saying what should have been obvious from he start.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Quote from: nullified on April 11, 2019, 08:49:47 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 11, 2019, 08:48:12 PM

Quote from: Hoopla! on April 11, 2019, 08:23:29 PM
So is redemption a concept of the past then?

Do we believe people can change or not? Or is it less that you don't think someone can change, you just don't care?

Personally, I believe people should be held to account for their actions, however we need to leave room for people to improve, otherwise why would they even try?

Looking back on things, the chance for redemption is handed out capriciously and has worked precisely once in PD history.

IRL, it's even worse.  Brock Turner got to skip the whole "taking your lumps" thing, and go straight to the "That's great, now vacate my convictions" section, while WoC go to prison for defending their own lives and the lives of their children.

NO.  Fuck that.  Fuck you.  Redemption - if it is allowed at ALL - is something you EARN, by WALKING YOUR STUPID ASS BACK INTO CIVILIZATION through ACTIONS that ameliorate the bad shit you did.

No repentance, no penance, then no fucking absolution. 

If you guys want to sit in Con-Troll's little kumbaya drum circle, feeling all squishy over how the poor ickle monsters feel, I can't stop you.  Shit, go ahead.  Have a Stephen Miller love-in. 

LET US KNOW HOW THAT WORKS OUT.

Getting weepy-eyed over active monsters is not a fucking virtue.

Thanks for saying what should have been obvious from he start.

I am thinking I need to see myself out of this thread.  I've seen it before.

Quote from: nullified on April 11, 2019, 07:43:59 PM
How do you create an opening to encourage self awareness that doesn't put every victim and/or target of shitty people in danger?

How does Contrapoints do it?

Talking to the Bad Person as if they are another human and not a monster. That's how a lot of deprogramming / deradicalization works.

I say this as someone whose mind has been changed about bad things in the past. Telling me to die over and over again would not have worked, it would have made me dig in and go "okay, fuck you too".

QuoteIf you leave the door open for some things to be "on a scale" you create a /fucking dangerous/ gap in your defenses.

If you're saying that Aziz Ansari and Harvey Weinstein did the exact same thing and deserve the exact same treatment, you're also creating a lot of damage.

There are things we should be deal with in absolute terms, no doubt. But saying 'I think we should try to understand why terrible people do those terrible things' is not exactly a nazi talking point.

Quote
What you're talking about specifically above is a backdoor for concern trolls, sea lions, and a kind of troll I don't have a snappy term for that promotes exactly one tiny shitty part of a larger shitty ideology, but publicly rejects the rest of it, in an attempt to win over community members, bit by bit, to being totally shitty.

As an aside, I want to point out a structural similarity to the welfare queen argument - some people will always abuse charitable systems. At what degree of abuse should we go "well fuck it, charity is cancelled now."

There is no foolproof methodology, no opening that cannot be exploited. Shit's complicated. Absolutism does not solve this for the right, and it won't work for the left.

Personally, one of the lines I draw is bad faith arguments. It's evidence of a closed mind, which is a waste of time to communicate with.

ITT, Con-Troll, for example, was not trying to troll us, he was trying to explain a genuine perspective (albeit poorly).
Someone like RP who is just trying to troll the board and piss people off is not worth the attempt at sincerity.

Quote from: nullified on April 11, 2019, 07:26:29 AM
All sexual interaction without consent can cause /serious fucking damage/. All of it. It might look "minor" to you but I'm extremely fucked up over some of that "minor" shit.

Keep digging that fucking hole, sparky. I'll gladly bury you when you've gotten it fucking deep enough.

Yes, but does that mean all sexual interaction without consent should result in the castration of the perpetrator?

How do you tell the difference? And is it worth bringing danger into the lives of people who have already been victimized if you can't tell till it's too late? Is it worth allowing privileged shitheads to play poor baby at the expense of the safety of oppressed peoples who have been victimized by their exact behavior?

For me, no. It isn't. It never will be. If they do the work, maybe I one day won't despise them as openly and loudly and consistently, but they should never be allowed to forget that they fucked up. That should hang over their heads for the rest of their lives. And some people have caused far too much suffering to even be given a pass then. There is no amount of work they can do to undo the damage they've done. If you believe otherwise I will really need an explanation, because that is /unthinkable/ to me.



I keep dodging ContraPoints for a very good reason and you keep bringing her up. Fine. I don't consume her content. I don't consume almost any video content ever. I know nothing about her approach. But I don't think there's any value in pampering shitty people just in case they might not become any shittier. Disgust and outrage are /defense mechanisms/. They exist /for a reason/. There is little value in trying to understand the Nazi except in preventative terms, and shitty people don't get that way because they're fundamentally good but just /upset by fucking liberals/. There's even less value in trying to understand the pedophile, which is one you haven't mentioned yet as far as I know (these names mean absolutely nothing to me for the most part).

So they should branded. Preferably somewhere super visible, like the forehead. Got it.

You can make sure they don't forget without branding them, ffs. We're talking about how society reacts to them, most of these things have criminal punishments already that I don't feel are in the scope of the topic.

ETA: Because we've gotten to the stage of intentional misinterpretation, let me be clear and say that no, we don't fucking brand humans, period. What the fuck.

Quote from: nullified on April 11, 2019, 07:43:59 PM


Some behavior is not fucking acceptable. I don't give a fuck if they become pariahs. They asked for that the second they covered themselves in dogshit and started yelling slurs. I don't care if they /can/ be saved, why would you fucking /want/ to?

Because allies are valuable.  I had a friend who used to be a nazi, back before there were nazis under every rock.  Now I didn't save him, I don't really know who did, but I was grateful for him in my life.  He understood white supremacists in a way that I never could and that sort of information can be incredibly valuable when trying to combat them.  The simplest, and most obvious example is that he taught me their codes, so I know HH and 88 mean nazi.

As far as pedos go there used to be a member here who felt that anyone accused of pedophilia should be destroyed.  Hopefully even the folks who didn't see the arguements about that can see the problem with her position.

/Accused/ of pedophilia is someone I'll probably shun without further evidence because of quite a few recent cases in circles I'm a part of where apparently baseless accusations got backed up much later when someone found old side blogs or sock puppet accounts.

Destruction is reserved for evidence, though. And before someone fucking goes there, I mean social destruction, not fucking murder.



To the prior post: Thanks for a direct answer finally to one of the core questions at the heart of this whole damn thing.

I don't think that's enough reason, because that sort of information is an open secret at best, but I can see there is /some/ value there. Now, what specifically caused his change? Ask him if you don't know.

Unfortunately I don't know him any longer.  I did ask him back when we hung out but he was kind of evasive about it all.  His wife is Hispanic, so the romantic part of me likes to imagine it was love, but I have no evidence.

I have nothing to go on either, but I tend to feel like disgust is a motivator.

It's powerful enough to cause LGBT folks to permanently damage themselves pretending to be "normal", or the whole thing where a trans person transitions in complete privacy, moves far away, changes their name, moves again to a third location and pretends they have no connection to their old life at all.

These are things we have evidence for, and they're things outside of people's control. Disgust about beliefs can be changed, though, so why would someone confronted with widespread disgust /not/ change their beliefs if people try to take control of shit that is baked into them over it?

That's my thinking. So I feel like disgust is an important part of stopping people from being shitty.



Edited to put scare quotes where they belong.

I mean, I'm totally fine with throwing the whole ass living celeb, content creator, or other, into the bin over 'minor differences of opinion, shit like bodily autonomy or transphobia. The world has more than enough other folks making shit that don't think it's their or the state's place to tell those who have an unwanted pregnancy they are murderers, other shit like not allowing folks to marry, or the audacity of wanting respect for their gender identity.

If someone does some bigoted shit years ago, and it resurfaces and instead of denouncing it, you reaffirm your position, kind of cool with finding some other funny cartoon or YouTube man.

Quote from: Don Coyote on April 12, 2019, 01:12:41 AM
If someone does some bigoted shit years ago, and it resurfaces and instead of denouncing it, you reaffirm your position, kind of cool with finding some other funny cartoon or YouTube man.

Agreed. Since that got mentioned, I'm reminded of how some people, when that bigoted shit does resurface, and they do denounce it, still get utterly shat on by morons who don't think with the head that's on their shoulders. And then someone who only just tuned in because of the new ruckus, turns the conversation into, "Well what did you do to get this kind of negative attention in the first place?"

Everyone has done some bigoted shit in their past, I think, and if it resurfaced and people denounce it, that's when you can move on. It might still be too much for some people to handle, and that's okay, but there's no point in burning the witch when they're not a witch anymore.*

I used to listen to Whitehouse. As of about 2010, William Bennett is not in my musical diet because he is a wretched creature. Holding my 2010 self to the standards of my 2019 self is silly.


* I do not condone burning anyone except in effigy.

Quote from: nullified on April 12, 2019, 01:29:37 AM
Holding my 2010 self to the standards of my 2019 self is silly.

"Whaaaat, you mean people and their opinions change over time?! How am I supposed to ruin your life now?! I thought personalities were set in stone. That's why I'm constantly an asshole."--The Collective Assholes of The World  :aaa:

Also yeah, don't burn people. Burnt people probably don't smell very good.

Unfortunately, I can confirm burnt people smell terrible. An ex burnt their hand very badly on a stovetop. They were okay, but it was kind of horrifying, as you'd likely expect.

Quote from: Al Qədic on April 12, 2019, 01:24:26 AM

Quote from: Don Coyote on April 12, 2019, 01:12:41 AM
If someone does some bigoted shit years ago, and it resurfaces and instead of denouncing it, you reaffirm your position, kind of cool with finding some other funny cartoon or YouTube man.

Agreed. Since that got mentioned, I'm reminded of how some people, when that bigoted shit does resurface, and they do denounce it, still get utterly shat on by morons who don't think with the head that's on their shoulders. And then someone who only just tuned in because of the new ruckus, turns the conversation into, "Well what did you do to get this kind of negative attention in the first place?"

AND THAT'S cancel culture. Which shouldn't be getting twisted up with "pedos and other sexual abusers can get fucking dumpstered"

And as far as this whole bigot outreach shit? Im not going to spend my time sifting through their bigot programming to unfuck them unless they have a direct and personal involvement in my life. Someone comes seigheiling in it's just into the trash if I don't need to bother with them.

It's not like there is such a shortage of people that anyone should be fucking quilted into trying save all these poor fucking incels and wannabe kid fuckers or High school rapists.

I heard some repetition in bits and pieces on what some people said in this thread - something about content creators as not being irreplaceable, and i think thats important.

Be it intentional or not, theres a certain demographic each creator is speaking and appealing to, and if i feel alienated or excluded or not identified with its message then its my time to move on... either out of lack of interest or out of self respect.

It makes me think a bit about JK Rowling and how theres all these memeing how retroactively shes making each and every innocent character a deviant... the thing about making Dumbledore retroactively more explicitly homosexual instead of the ambivalence of it in the novels... her message is fantasy and inclusiveness, so all the rednecks that were already on the fence in a profound debate about if her work promotes witchcraft and demon worshipping will now simply jump out of the ship, which is ok.

I dont have good personal examples, i can only think of Nietzsche as an example... all of his retarded pompousness that boils down to some teenage edgy narcissism is what drives away so many people, and i find it obnoxious just as those people do, but i dont banish him from my library because i see the worth in his thought despite all of his flaws which is irreplaceable... now, if i had all the time in the world i would actively look for a better expositor of his good ideas, and if i found him id probably do away with him, but since i dont have all the time in the world, hell have to do for now, but his flaws will always motivate me to find a replacement.

Our contact with content creators is nothing more than a product of circumstance or hyping by others... if were basic enough to find no flaws in them, by all means embrace them... otherwise be prepared to either be tolerant of their flaws or have the energy to find more fitting replacements.

I spend the time to find a replacement or — I believe you missed this — do without entirely.

Going back to Whitehouse, NO ONE does an aggressive, seething maniacal shout-down performance like William Bennett. He's inimitable, and his flaws are horrid racism and fascist sympathies.

He's been working on the racism, I admit. (We've gone from 1600s Britain to 1800s Britain! What a change! Such growth!) It's still not enough.

But even if you can look past the racism (get out of my internet you piece of shit), he's supporting outspoken Nazi content creators.

As I've said, NO ONE makes power electronics like William Bennett does. Why You Never Became A Dancer is a song no one else could make. Afro Noise I is an absolutely incredible album if you're into that kind of thing (and I certainly am) — but its creator is such a horrible person that any sane person would not be caught dead listening.

I can not replace that music. I can, however, simply remove it from my life.

That's fine to, to do without entirely too... but one can get rid of Bennett and still like the noise/industrial or whatever its called, hes just but a mere voice within a genre.

I think i agree for the most part on how creative, entertainment and fiction enterprises are hard to dissociate with the creator, because the money and social leverage they get comes from it and gives power to their influence but i think one cannot make the same declarations for non-fiction and academics. And even though this thread has been more about fiction and entertainment than the latter, but i think its an important distinction after all.

That's pretty fair, honestly. Half of our knowledge of aerospace medicine (the aero- half to be specific) came from Nazi human experimentation, but totally throwing all of that information out would do everyone, victims included, a disservice. I'm uncomfortable as fuck with that, but I can't see any argument that we'd be better off /ditching/ that knowledge. It's going to be an uncomfortable, upsetting fact for eternity, and I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. Burying our mistakes is how we repeat them.

Ok.

But back to entertainment and culture: could you enjoy the product of a vile person, but this person for some reason doesnt benefit from it or they already died?

Idk, for example, theres a strong case for Lewis Carrol being a pedophile... but his Alice books are a type of sublimation of those horrible impulses into something positive. I never forget about what his tendencies were, but i can still enjoy those works.

It would seem like people equate liking a work with financially supporting the author... or as if the point of origin needs to be pure and virtuous for the product to be any good. I still dont understand the rationale behind it. For some reason i get the mental image of someone that hates someones race trying to seduce them so it doesnt work out? Maybe in that sense art is a type of seduction of the audience by the author, and certain things "kill the mood" while others bolster it, and the end result of acceptance or rejection is the final balance of these forces.

Its hard for me to think of this, because i cant recall anyone i boycotted or blacklisted for more personal reasons that are beyond their creation itself which i didnt like beforehand anyways.

William Burroughs would be example for me: Shot his wife in a drunken game, slept with a teen male prostitute in Tangier, decades of heroin abuse.

In fact for me the interest in his work wasn't divorced from his horrible life, for me the interesting part was explicitly how his horrible life intertwined with his writing.

Aliester Crowley is another who was a horrible person, and whose art is better for it.  He fucked cats (and lots more, that's just the one that strikes me as worst), but he also explored, and explained, the mystical traditions of Europe in a way that gets at the heart of a lot that no other author does. 

Quote from: Faust on April 12, 2019, 09:54:25 AM
William Burroughs would be example for me: Shot his wife in a drunken game, slept with a teen male prostitute in Tangier, decades of heroin abuse.

In fact for me the interest in his work wasn't divorced from his horrible life, for me the interesting part was explicitly how his horrible life intertwined with his writing.

I guess trainwrecks have entertainment value too? Sade could fit in the same category? Or at least as a window to understandment of their thinking process idk.

Maybe the dissonance is when people create happy or joyful things while being hateful in their personal lives? Tomorrow i think ill re-read the whole thread.

BTW if anyone is good at thread necromancy, i think we discussed this sometime before and we could get some insight from that?

I can't read six pages of popular moral outrage and shitting on your own. I did think it was a great post, Cram. It's been years, and you're still one of the most thoughtful posters.

Quote from: The Johnny on April 12, 2019, 09:42:24 AM
But back to entertainment and culture: could you enjoy the product of a vile person, but this person for some reason doesnt benefit from it or they already died?

I had to give this a lot of serious thought. I think I can finally answer you.

Yes, with some caveats.

Some works are themselves so disgusting and terrible that they cannot be saved. There is no way you can enjoy Mein Kampf without being an innately awful person. This actually affects some non-fiction as well: Julius Evola is the only primary English language source for a lot of European esoterica of the medieval era, and he's filled it with fascist notions from top to bottom. The work he's done is so tainted that it cannot be trusted. This is also true of much fiction and entertainment. You can't listen to Skrewdriver and be anything but awful. It's non-negotiable.

And other works are so bound to their creator's awful nature that to enjoy them necessitates consciously rejecting their creator's intent — knowing what they were communicating and saying "No." I find this to be true of Lovecraft, though that's asking for a flame war if I don't add that that is my personal view of the matter. (Incidentally, I think Lovecraft was a shitty writer to begin with, independent of his qualifications as a human being.)

But usually, yes, I think you can enjoy a shitty person's work independent of their beliefs, so long as you aren't supporting them or their beliefs. Under current copyright regimes, this usually means piracy if they don't enter the public domain and the royalties don't land with individuals and/or organizations opposed to their beliefs.

So i mined the thread for names referred of what people consider irredeemable... and since i dont know the names or their stories, i wont offer an interpretation regarding them, but heres the list:

R Kelly

Hardwick

Louis CK

burzum

brock turner

harvey weinstein

william bennett

Names excluded were the ones people found tolerable (?) or not interfering with the enjoyment of their work entirely. So maybe theres a pattern?

I don't see how you excluded Bill Gates.

I don't know most of those names myself.

R. Kelly is a sex offender convicted of child molestation or something really damn close, I don't know the details.

Louis CK mocked the Parkland shooting survivors. Kids who saw their friends die.

Burzum is Varg Vikernes, a neo-Nazi who burns churches and killed his bandmate (stabbed him 32 times) for the suspicion said bandmate was gay.

William Bennett is a musician who invented the genre of power electronics. He has long supported acts in the genre regardless of their political affiliation (including many, many fascists, it's a fascist playground of a genre really with only a recent spate of queer, largely trans artists entering it shifting that dynamic).

He stopped Whitehouse in 2008, after the release of the 2003 album Bird Seed which had mercifully abandoned all the "shock" imagery (serial killer worship, fascism, extreme racism) for personal rage. His new project, Cut Hands, is based on an extremely racist interpretation of black culture: scary men with spears and loincloths doing voodoo chants type shit. It's literally distorted tribal percussion.

Bennett is the only one with any complexity to his background, which is why this is by far the biggest description.

I should add that I am AWARE of Weinstein but that I do not know the specifics.

Voodoo tribal stuff is real, does aknowleging this make one irredeemable?

I mean, Albinos still get butchered because their parts are reportedly useful in witchcraft real.

I don't think any significant scientific studies have been undertaken to determine the value of albino body parts in witchcraft, but I don't think they have to. For the most part, witchcraft is useless. For the, most part.

Go look for your daily dose of abuse somewhere else. Adults are talking.

Quote from: Fujikoma on April 13, 2019, 02:47:59 AM
Voodoo tribal stuff is real, does aknowleging this make one irredeemable?

I don't know that you understand the significance of connecting black culture with voodoo...if you play a trope straight, then you're treating that trope as if it's appropriate. The "blacks do voodoo and wear loincloths" trope is not appropriate, so for a project to "be based on" it does in fact mean that something shitty is going on.

If you're wondering why that's not appropriate, then is it okay if I treat you like a cave-person?

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 02:20:29 AM

Quote from: The Johnny on April 12, 2019, 09:42:24 AM
But back to entertainment and culture: could you enjoy the product of a vile person, but this person for some reason doesnt benefit from it or they already died?

I had to give this a lot of serious thought. I think I can finally answer you.

Yes, with some caveats.

Some works are themselves so disgusting and terrible that they cannot be saved. There is no way you can enjoy Mein Kampf without being an innately awful person. This actually affects some non-fiction as well: Julius Evola is the only primary English language source for a lot of European esoterica of the medieval era, and he's filled it with fascist notions from top to bottom. The work he's done is so tainted that it cannot be trusted. This is also true of much fiction and entertainment. You can't listen to Skrewdriver and be anything but awful. It's non-negotiable.

And other works are so bound to their creator's awful nature that to enjoy them necessitates consciously rejecting their creator's intent — knowing what they were communicating and saying "No." I find this to be true of Lovecraft, though that's asking for a flame war if I don't add that that is my personal view of the matter. (Incidentally, I think Lovecraft was a shitty writer to begin with, independent of his qualifications as a human being.)

But usually, yes, I think you can enjoy a shitty person's work independent of their beliefs, so long as you aren't supporting them or their beliefs. Under current copyright regimes, this usually means piracy if they don't enter the public domain and the royalties don't land with individuals and/or organizations opposed to their beliefs.

I dont know if it was my mistake to frame the issue about "the joy" that a creation offers the consumer as being the sole factor, even tho it does seem to be a big factor. So the way to circumvent a joyful creation from a vile creator is to in one way or another the creator receiving no benefit from it. So i think the dead get a free pass on a lot of things?

But it was mentioned before about not things that bring joy but that are practical and useful... the discoveries made thru atrocities and by war criminals... also for example, Mein Kampf i think (?) its still banned in Germany because its a taboo subject and they cant trust their citizenry to read it responsibly (?) while in reality it can be a great resource to understand this person's rationale for what he did... Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism" is important in that sense too because we get to understand in a philosophical level what he wanted to do. Then theres a billion documentaries about serial killers which can be used by either wannabe killers or those seeking to understand them clinically. Faust mentioned Burroughs.

So in synthesis one could say that:

1) Regarding culture that brings joy but the creator is a shithead:
-One can consume it without problem if the creator isnt too untolerable
-The creator doesnt benefit from the creation
-The creation isnt itself tainted enough by the creators bad tendencies

2) Regarding culture that brings understanding/knowledge:
-As long as its useful (?)

Theres a lot of nuances that can be added like "can/should" and how a lot of it is after all a matter of taste... but besides all of that and coming back to the OP... theres this whole primitive mob mentality and virtue signaling (by both sides of the political spectrum) that goes on in the alluded Cancel Culture, and it just really reinforces the idea to an outsider of how divided in tribes and how fiercely everyone is after each others throats in America - i dont recall a single case of a creator or writer getting boycotted and drenched in tar and feathers here in Mexico, or for that matter in any other country, maybe im wrong and i dont watch the news enough.

Fujikoma, at what point does posting 5 times in a row in a 2 minute span with one-liners is it considered spam?

If i could mute you i would have done so already, so could you at least do me the courtesy of fitting your brain leakage to a single post so i can just scroll thru it faster?

Thx

Consider for a moment Mein Kampf in the context of the manifesto of the Christchurch killer.

Very few people can be trusted to handle that sort of thing /responsibly/. Professionals specifically asked people not to spread it around. It can be useful, sure! But it's like plutonium: it's only useful in the hands of people who know what they're doing, and it's at best a mild hazard and at worst a horrific radioactive excursion incident for everyone else.

If any random person has a copy of Mein Kampf on their shelf, it's almost a guarantee that they are a horrible human, damn near 100% of the time. There are precious, precious few exceptions, and they tend to have degrees and shit. We would feel the same about almost anyone who kept the Christchurch killer's manifesto on their desktop, and for good reason.

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 03:15:56 AM
Consider for a moment Mein Kampf in the context of the manifesto of the Christchurch killer.

Very few people can be trusted to handle that sort of thing /responsibly/. Professionals specifically asked people not to spread it around. It can be useful, sure! But it's like plutonium: it's only useful in the hands of people who know what they're doing, and it's at best a mild hazard and at worst a horrific radioactive excursion incident for everyone else.

If any random person has a copy of Mein Kampf on their shelf, it's almost a guarantee that they are a horrible human, damn near 100% of the time. There are precious, precious few exceptions, and they tend to have degrees and shit. We would feel the same about almost anyone who kept the Christchurch killer's manifesto on their desktop, and for good reason.

On one hand its true that people are influenced easily and can only interpret things at a face value, so i know where youre coming from... on the other hand its treating the citizenry as mentally challenged children, which is very beneficial to a paternalistic authoritative government... maybe the solution is a critical-thinking based education, but nobodys going to allow that in this continent.

Maybe thats the bigger problem, were stuck between two modes, embracing or censoring/repressing a thought with nothing in between, with different groups trying to police literature/media in the way that theyre capable of... im a bad example because im an academic, but i keep Mussolinis manifesto and Anna Freud's books because even tho i think theyre vile, i try to understand them so i can criticize them properly... it seems like im drifting far from the OP but i think these things are relevant to it too in some manner.

I split my response into two posts because I wanted to give the second half some more thought but thought you deserved the initial response to the first half before it had been too long in the oven.

I agree that America is very polarized and split up. I'd argue that's because of the range and disconnection of the badness inherent in American culture.

Bigotry is bad.
A lot of current black and Hispanic culture is very sexist and homophobic.
White Gays think they can be racist because "we're a minority too!"
Literal fascists walk the streets with torches, crash cars into protestors, organize massive harassment campaigns of anyone who opposes them.
Feminists that hate some women because a doctor called them something else at birth exist.
A whole movement of men that believe women owe them sex and are inherently inferior and unsuited to any other purpose exists.
People born with functional disabilities are told to suck it up and stop leeching off the system, put in police vans, sent to prison for the crime of not being physically able to drag themselves out of the room.
Journalists are literally body-slammed into tables by sitting politicians for asking questions about these things.
Police shoot unarmed civilians for the crime of being differently colored.
Trans people tell other trans people they aren't really trans because they don't suffer enough extra bullshit on top of the social suffering they already go through.
And disabled, queer people of color die at a higher rate than any other group, no matter how finely divided. They have a higher rate of homelessness than any other group. Their lives are shit, by any definition.

No one is not guilty of some bullshit unless they're the most victimized people possible to find. That's going to cause some fucking polarization.

With regards to you owning these sort of texts: I actually would believe you would have a chance of using these things correctly in the first place. You have the philosophical background from PD alone, without regard to any other extra education you've possibly had, and you have a degree in psychology, right? Add in your inherent distaste for the beliefs espoused. That's the exact person best suited to approach these things safely, I think.

I would say probably the /vast majority of people here/ count as part of that group, even. Cain certainly seems to think so, given he offered so send the Christchurch manifesto in private to people on the board. I don't distrust his judgement there, it's a valid bit of evidence to back this belief I have up.

But the average person is not, I think, mentally built for it. They certainly /can/ be, but they haven't gone through the steps to reach that point. Cain not simply posting it in the open would also seem to agree with my belief here.

I agree that a critical thinking course as a basic grade school class on the order of math or English would be a good solution, but I also think that if everyone had decent mental health professionals in their life and training in weapons handling, firearms would not be a particularly big problem. (Switzerland has a very large amount of privately owned weapons per capita, but very few mass shootings.) Given neither is the case nor ever likely to be the case, damage reduction needs to be considered.

Quote from: The Johnny on April 13, 2019, 03:15:04 AM

Fujikoma, at what point does posting 5 times in a row in a 2 minute span with one-liners is it considered spam?

If i could mute you i would have done so already, so could you at least do me the courtesy of fitting your brain leakage to a single post so i can just scroll thru it faster?

It's a bit awkward to find, but it's there.

Click "Profile" -> "Summary"
Click "Modify Profile" -> "Nemesis/Ignore List..." -> Edit Ignore List
Type "Fujikoma" in the "Member" box, click "Add".

Nemesis doesn't appear to work on Tapatalk, which is the only way to really use the forum on mobile.

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 05:28:25 AM
Nemesis doesn't appear to work on Tapatalk, which is the only way to really use the forum on mobile.

This probably won't be helpful to mention, but I use chrome on mobile to access the forum and it works just fine.

Quote from: chaotic neutral observer on April 13, 2019, 05:26:04 AM

Quote from: The Johnny on April 13, 2019, 03:15:04 AM

Fujikoma, at what point does posting 5 times in a row in a 2 minute span with one-liners is it considered spam?

If i could mute you i would have done so already, so could you at least do me the courtesy of fitting your brain leakage to a single post so i can just scroll thru it faster?

It's a bit awkward to find, but it's there.

Click "Profile" -> "Summary"
Click "Modify Profile" -> "Nemesis/Ignore List..." -> Edit Ignore List
Type "Fujikoma" in the "Member" box, click "Add".

Thanks you're an angel. I even had a brief discussion with a mod and he didnt know how to do it and we assumed the function didnt exist anymore.  :lulz:

It's far too small for me to read, even on the relatively large screen of this monster phone (shout-out to QGP's husband, thanks again) without constant zooming, and that becomes a massive headache itself.

I wonder if there's enough control over the forum display that Faust could make a mobile CSS template for us goofy bastards who post on phones? I am pretty sure this software supports user-defined themes, though I believe the admin has to install them first. I'd uninstall this app for good if the forum was simply made navigable on mobile without suffering, even if only after I logged in.

Wow, no wonder you guys are a muddled mess.

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 02:41:55 AM
Louis CK mocked the Parkland shooting survivors. Kids who saw their friends die.

Prior to that(?) he went away because it turns out he liked to masturbate in front of young women comedians.

Forgot about that part. Thanks for reminding me, my memory is honestly terrible.

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 03:37:38 AM
I split my response into two posts because I wanted to give the second half some more thought but thought you deserved the initial response to the first half before it had been too long in the oven.

I agree that America is very polarized and split up. I'd argue that's because of the range and disconnection of the badness inherent in American culture.

Bigotry is bad.
A lot of current black and Hispanic culture is very sexist and homophobic.
White Gays think they can be racist because "we're a minority too!"
Literal fascists walk the streets with torches, crash cars into protestors, organize massive harassment campaigns of anyone who opposes them.
Feminists that hate some women because a doctor called them something else at birth exist.
A whole movement of men that believe women owe them sex and are inherently inferior and unsuited to any other purpose exists.
People born with functional disabilities are told to suck it up and stop leeching off the system, put in police vans, sent to prison for the crime of not being physically able to drag themselves out of the room.
Journalists are literally body-slammed into tables by sitting politicians for asking questions about these things.
Police shoot unarmed civilians for the crime of being differently colored.
Trans people tell other trans people they aren't really trans because they don't suffer enough extra bullshit on top of the social suffering they already go through.
And disabled, queer people of color die at a higher rate than any other group, no matter how finely divided. They have a higher rate of homelessness than any other group. Their lives are shit, by any definition.

No one is not guilty of some bullshit unless they're the most victimized people possible to find. That's going to cause some fucking polarization.

The only case of divide in recent popular opinion has been about this actress, Yalitza Aparicio, who played a housemaid in the movie "Roma"... mostly about how shes a "pinche india" that is all over important magazines covers, starring in shampoo commercials and nominated for important awards... which is a mix between proffessional envy of her success and outright racist hatred.

The thing is, the opinions that defend her, and the opinions that are against her are of zero absolute consequences... its like literally the importance of a youtube video comments feud. There are no jobs lost, no boycotting, no breaking of friendships over it... its like picking a sports team and supporting it, and opposing the other teams.

Theres other cultural differences overall... here media isnt something you participate in, youre merely a consumer, and you either like it or shut up about it, theres no discussion... not because its prohibited but because entertainment is just what it is, entertainment and it doesnt bleed over to politics nor the other way around.

And im not even saying this is a good or a bad thing it just is, but considering the list you offered:

-The only real ethnic divide we have is "urban mexican" and "indigena"... which in fact ontologically is just a matter of degree, since all mexicans are of mixed race, were mostly a mix between spaniard and native, or euro and native... so even if some of us hate the more pure-blood natives it would seem more an economic discrimination than based on race.

-Which brings me to the next point... were so capitalistic that as long as youre middle class and above you wont suffer discrimination for your race or sexual orientation or beliefs... were cosmopolitan and predatory like that, only the poor and the vulnerable dont get to deviate.

Who knows? Maybe all the petty public squabbling is a sign of a healthy democratic and politically involved citizenry... or at least healthier than the apathetic silence we have here... for one, we spent so much time under a single party that commited electoral fraud for so long that discussion seemed pointless... journalists here dont get bodyslammed, they just get killed and buried at unmarked fosas... so maybe dissidents here are accustomed to either be ignored or killed.

Maybe this public rallying is some sort of a "revenge of the opressed" sort of thing?

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 02:41:55 AM
William Bennett is a musician who invented the genre of power electronics. He has long supported acts in the genre regardless of their political affiliation (including many, many fascists, it's a fascist playground of a genre really with only a recent spate of queer, largely trans artists entering it shifting that dynamic).

He stopped Whitehouse in 2008, after the release of the 2003 album Bird Seed which had mercifully abandoned all the "shock" imagery (serial killer worship, fascism, extreme racism) for personal rage. His new project, Cut Hands, is based on an extremely racist interpretation of black culture: scary men with spears and loincloths doing voodoo chants type shit. It's literally distorted tribal percussion.

Bennett is the only one with any complexity to his background, which is why this is by far the biggest description.

Update and corrections.

I said before that Whitehouse's Bird Seed was largely personal rage. Correcting myself, I was remembering the first third of Cut Hands Has The Solution, which is indeed very much a personal fury. But the rest of it, and the rest of the album as a whole, is all about rape. It is weird revisiting this shit, and I only did it because I had this nagging feeling I was wrong. I was right about being wrong, so in a weird way I'm glad I took the time and spoons to do it.

On a related note, having actually revisited this shit, I was blinded by nostalgia for my first power electronics album. William Bennett is completely disposable. I can and probably should make a power electronics album of my own of similar soul-shattering fury and rage. I could even bake a similar feeling of shame and degradation into the lyrics without resorting to edgy rape rants and victim blaming. Never mind what I said before about him being irreplaceable.

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 05:28:25 AM
Nemesis doesn't appear to work on Tapatalk, which is the only way to really use the forum on mobile.

I get by using the website through Chrome. If I have something lengthy to post I use of writing app program to get it down first then copypasta.

Quote from: The Johnny on April 13, 2019, 06:22:31 AM

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 03:37:38 AM
I split my response into two posts because I wanted to give the second half some more thought but thought you deserved the initial response to the first half before it had been too long in the oven.

I agree that America is very polarized and split up. I'd argue that's because of the range and disconnection of the badness inherent in American culture.

Bigotry is bad.
A lot of current black and Hispanic culture is very sexist and homophobic.
White Gays think they can be racist because "we're a minority too!"
Literal fascists walk the streets with torches, crash cars into protestors, organize massive harassment campaigns of anyone who opposes them.
Feminists that hate some women because a doctor called them something else at birth exist.
A whole movement of men that believe women owe them sex and are inherently inferior and unsuited to any other purpose exists.
People born with functional disabilities are told to suck it up and stop leeching off the system, put in police vans, sent to prison for the crime of not being physically able to drag themselves out of the room.
Journalists are literally body-slammed into tables by sitting politicians for asking questions about these things.
Police shoot unarmed civilians for the crime of being differently colored.
Trans people tell other trans people they aren't really trans because they don't suffer enough extra bullshit on top of the social suffering they already go through.
And disabled, queer people of color die at a higher rate than any other group, no matter how finely divided. They have a higher rate of homelessness than any other group. Their lives are shit, by any definition.

No one is not guilty of some bullshit unless they're the most victimized people possible to find. That's going to cause some fucking polarization.

The only case of divide in recent popular opinion has been about this actress, Yalitza Aparicio, who played a housemaid in the movie "Roma"... mostly about how shes a "pinche india" that is all over important magazines covers, starring in shampoo commercials and nominated for important awards... which is a mix between proffessional envy of her success and outright racist hatred.

The thing is, the opinions that defend her, and the opinions that are against her are of zero absolute consequences... its like literally the importance of a youtube video comments feud. There are no jobs lost, no boycotting, no breaking of friendships over it... its like picking a sports team and supporting it, and opposing the other teams.

Theres other cultural differences overall... here media isnt something you participate in, youre merely a consumer, and you either like it or shut up about it, theres no discussion... not because its prohibited but because entertainment is just what it is, entertainment and it doesnt bleed over to politics nor the other way around.

And im not even saying this is a good or a bad thing it just is, but considering the list you offered:

-The only real ethnic divide we have is "urban mexican" and "indigena"... which in fact ontologically is just a matter of degree, since all mexicans are of mixed race, were mostly a mix between spaniard and native, or euro and native... so even if some of us hate the more pure-blood natives it would seem more an economic discrimination than based on race.

-Which brings me to the next point... were so capitalistic that as long as youre middle class and above you wont suffer discrimination for your race or sexual orientation or beliefs... were cosmopolitan and predatory like that, only the poor and the vulnerable dont get to deviate.

Who knows? Maybe all the petty public squabbling is a sign of a healthy democratic and politically involved citizenry... or at least healthier than the apathetic silence we have here... for one, we spent so much time under a single party that commited electoral fraud for so long that discussion seemed pointless... journalists here dont get bodyslammed, they just get killed and buried at unmarked fosas... so maybe dissidents here are accustomed to either be ignored or killed.

Maybe this public rallying is some sort of a "revenge of the opressed" sort of thing?

I think you make some useful contrasts here. It is definitely true that for the most part, Mexico has it worse if you're in the outgroups, for instance. Journalists don't get killed in the USA all that often that I know of. The political process is infamously corrupt (although I believe that is changing now?) and there is rarely much that resembles hope if you're one of the downtrodden. Not just Mexico either — my Filipino friends have a similar description, and I know Indonesia and a lot of South America is looking pretty bad from the outside.



I think you're kind of right about it being a revenge of the oppressed, and that you are onto something about it being a healthy sign. But I don't think it's fully healthy, exactly. I think instead it's a sign of a working cultural immune system: these people being beaten down feel empowered enough to fight back, they aren't tied to the ground by despair. The immune system is finding these bad memes tangled in the core values of America as interpreted by the oppressed, and eliminating them (or at least dragging them, gruesome and malformed, into the light of day).

That hopefulness is a big thing, when I was first coming to terms with being trans I didn't even pretend there would be a day when not going stealth would be an option for me. I lived in the assumption I'd need to hide myself from everyone forever. Now, I don't know if I'll see that day where I'm free to be me openly, but I know it's /possible/ it can come to pass, and that /I personally/ am empowered to in some small way /force/ that future to happen.

(I need to give specific thanks again to QGP here: she was the one who finally snapped me out of that sort of learned helplessness, by showing me change in action.)

So you're seeing people surrounded by badness, but actually /seeing the end of the tunnel/, not just a light, there's fucking trees and squirrels and shit out there! We're nearly there! We just need to push on a bit further!

And when other people, gross slimy gremlins, start trying to drag them away from that into the maintenance tunnels on the sides of the track, of course they'll fight back. Maybe they'll throw punches at each other in the process, someone got a bit too much crud on them and smells like the rotten things surrounding them or maybe their bite is contagious, pick the metaphor however you see fit! But we see that bright future and by fucking god we want it, we've earned it, we'll inch our bones across that threshold even if we have to leave the rest of our bodies behind.

Very insightful points, thanks for that.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on April 13, 2019, 06:51:12 AM

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 05:28:25 AM
Nemesis doesn't appear to work on Tapatalk, which is the only way to really use the forum on mobile.

I get by using the website through Chrome. If I have something lengthy to post I use of writing app program to get it down first then copypasta.

Unfortunately, while Chrome appears to work for you nerds, I've been saddled with an iThing. It's actually really nice to use, but it is an iThing with all that entails. I think Chrome exists for iOS, but I'm pretty sure it's just Safari with crud stacked on top, from what I remember when I researched alternate browsers. So it's Tapatalk or suffer.

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 06:55:16 AM

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on April 13, 2019, 06:51:12 AM

Quote from: nullified on April 13, 2019, 05:28:25 AM
Nemesis doesn't appear to work on Tapatalk, which is the only way to really use the forum on mobile.

I get by using the website through Chrome. If I have something lengthy to post I use of writing app program to get it down first then copypasta.

Unfortunately, while Chrome appears to work for you nerds, I've been saddled with an iThing. It's actually really nice to use, but it is an iThing with all that entails. I think Chrome exists for iOS, but I'm pretty sure it's just Safari with crud stacked on top, from what I remember when I researched alternate browsers. So it's Tapatalk or suffer.

Well that's a big bag of suck. Do what you got to do as long as you keep on posting. I've come to very much like having you around!

Nemesis isnt the ignore/block list.

Quote from: Don Coyote on April 14, 2019, 04:29:52 PM
Nemesis isnt the ignore/block list.

Who the hell wants to ignore their nemesis? That is like sitting in a room with your back to the door, or not checking your bedroom for traps before sleep.

Quote from: Faust on April 14, 2019, 04:38:46 PM

Quote from: Don Coyote on April 14, 2019, 04:29:52 PM
Nemesis isnt the ignore/block list.

Who the hell wants to ignore their nemesis? That is like sitting in a room with your back to the door, or not checking your bedroom for traps before sleep.

Or not randomly shooting through the door.

Came across this Last Week Tonight episode from a few years ago; food waste is dumb and bad and, in a way, Cancel Culture™ is part of it too! I wonder what other theoretical concepts are edible. :lulz:

Be gone, ye imperfect peaches!

https://youtu.be/i8xwLWb0lLY

Contrapoints video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8) about being cancelled tonight really hit it home, its really personal, but really hits home the one trick pony of the outrage machine and the stages of attack, and it's funny it applies to everyone I've seen and can only happen with the inhuman locust effect (a person is capable of compassion, but people behave like an angry swarm).

She addresses some of the stuff people have said here as a negative about her, (and by cancel by association as an attack to attempt to deplatform someone) so now I know more about that drama and based on her side of the story, I can really see where she is coming from.

"A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", cosigned by like 150 notable people

https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

Notable mostly for having almost unlimited access to media outlets, spreading dumb ideas on them and then screeching like harpies when criticised for it on Twitter.

Quote from: Cain on July 09, 2020, 02:36:11 PM
Notable mostly for having almost unlimited access to media outlets, spreading dumb ideas on them and then screeching like harpies when criticised for it on Twitter.

(https://media.giphy.com/media/DFu7j1d1AQbaE/giphy.gif)

More seriously, there are two good, recent articles which run contra to the Harpers open letter, and quite convincingly so.

Osita Nwanevu in The New Republic (https://newrepublic.com/article/158346/willful-blindness-reactionary-liberalism):

QuoteWhen a speaker is denied or when staffers at a publication argue that something should not have been published, the rights of the parties in question haven't been violated in any way. But what we tend to hear in these and similar situations are criticisms that are at odds with the principle that groups in liberal society have the general right to commit themselves to values which many might disagree with and make decisions on that basis. There's nothing unreasonable about criticizing the substance of such decisions and the values that produce them. But accusations of "illiberalism" in these cases carry the implication that nonstate institutions under liberalism have an obligation of some sort to be maximally permissive of opposing ideas⁠—or at least maximally permissive of the kinds of ideas critics of progressive identity politics consider important. In fact, they do not.

Associative freedom is no less vital to liberalism than the other freedoms, and is actually integral to their functioning. There isn't a right explicitly enumerated in the First Amendment that isn't implicitly dependent on or augmented by similarly minded individuals having the right to come together. Most people worship with others; an assembly or petition of one isn't worth much; the institutions of the press are, again, associations; and individual speech is functionally inert unless some group chooses to offer a venue or a platform. And political speech is, in the first place, generally aimed at stirring some group or constituency to contemplation or action.

And Nesrine Malik in The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/03/the-myth-of-the-free-speech-crisis):

QuoteFree speech had seemingly come to mean that no one had any right to object to what anyone ever said – which not only meant that no one should object to Johnson's comments but, in turn, that no one should object to their objection. Free speech logic, rather than the pursuit of a lofty Enlightenment value, had become a race to the bottom, where the alternative to being "professionally offended" is never to be offended at all. This logic today demands silence from those who are defending themselves from abuse or hate speech. It is, according to the director of the Institute of Race Relations, "the privileging of freedom of speech over freedom to life".

Our alleged free speech crisis was never really about free speech. The backdrop to the myth is rising anti-immigration sentiment and Islamophobia. Free-speech-crisis advocates always seem to have an agenda. They overwhelmingly wanted to exercise their freedom of speech in order to agitate against minorities, women, immigrants and Muslims.

But they dress these base impulses up in the language of concern or anti-establishment conspiracism. Similar to the triggers of political-correctness hysteria, there is a direct correlation between the rise in free speech panic and the rise in far-right or hard-right political energy, as evidenced by anti-immigration rightwing electoral successes in the US, the UK and across continental Europe. As the space for these views expanded, so the concept of free speech became frayed and tattered. It began to become muddled by false equivalence, caught between fact and opinion, between action and reaction. The discourse became mired in a misunderstanding of free speech as absolute.

Both are worth your time.

I'll take some time with those, thanks!

For me, what proves "cancel culture" isn't a thing is the fact that so many progressives still count Harry Potter and Father Ted among their favourite things (rightly or wrongly).

I still get MAGA freaks whining at me about their freedom to have an opinion, or how their opinion is "Just as valid as mine" or how "you can't judge me on my opinions."

1.  They DO have the right to an opinion.  I, however, have the right to mock them for their opinion.

2.  Nope.  A bad opinion is still bad.

3.  That is in fact the main means by which I judge people.

Quote from: Nyborj the Priest on July 09, 2020, 03:11:54 PM
For me, what proves "cancel culture" isn't a thing is the fact that so many progressives still count Harry Potter and Father Ted among their favourite things (rightly or wrongly).

Cancel culture is very much a thing, it's just not universal.

Quote from: Nyborj the Priest on July 09, 2020, 03:11:54 PM
For me, what proves "cancel culture" isn't a thing is the fact that so many progressives still count Harry Potter and Father Ted among their favourite things (rightly or wrongly).

Cancel culture implies de-platforming someone based on unverifiable claims. In both those examples those people are out and out unabashed Transphobes, they both own and accept their views, they were given the opportunity to clarify if there was a miscommunication and they did so, the verified they are garbage people. It's not cancel culture to ignore or deride someone with irrefutable shitty opinions. There's nothing unverifiable, its right there. I bet if I go onto either of their twitter accounts for the last couple of days they are still going with that shit.

Deplatforming those examples are not cancel culture, they are just the squeaky wheel getting the grease.

To me cancel culture is more Like contrapoints being called a truescum or for using a controversial transgender person in her video for a soundbyte. Or Pewdiepie being deplatformed for "Being a Nazi", instead of what he should be deplatformed for "Being a moron" or  "living up to the worst stereotypes of being an edgy game gamer"

I have discussed Father Ted with two groups of people, those who said I shouldn't watch it because it is financially supporting Graham Linehan (Cancel culture? I don't think so) and those that dont but still recognise he is a dirt bag.

This is an unfair argument for the people who morally believe it is wrong for me to continue to watch father ted. Regardless of the points they make, no matter how justifiable morally they will not beat:
I like thing, I am going to continue watching thing. Besides a TV show takes a village, not a person, it would be disrespectful to the memory of Dermot Morgans finest accomplishment.

The new and even more infantalised and feeble reaction I am seeing is the current removal of TV show episodes regardless of their context and purpose:

The blackface lethal weapon episode - Its always sunny in Philadelphia - A show in which a group of awful people do awful things for 12 seasons, but we cant show the blackface episode any more because that might be obscene

The Germans - Faulty Towers - The Major's racist tirade, which was supposed to be uncomfortable and terrible, the joke was the racist old fart that everyone is embarrassed over, not what he was saying.

Are You Right There Father? (The Chinese people move to craggy Island) - Father Ted - Ted Makes a genuinely racist Chinese caricature, and gets caught over it and spends the rest of the episode trying to undo it, the episode is genius and results in ted being latched onto by actual Nazi's

In each case the removal is lazy corporate "Passive Progressive" behavior where companies want to appear in tune, but instead take an action that is devoid of merit for face value. We will remove something that makes us uncomfortable, despite the fact that the purpose behind that art was to make you uncomfortable

my feelings are complicated, I think this is one of those essays that makes points and also makes bad points.

The fack that JK Fucking Rowling signed it sets off a lot of alarm bells, like, ohhhhh she's sick of being called a TERF and now she's calling for "civility" or some shit

but I also don't want to kneejerk at that -- the essay can live or die on its own merits


I understand the objections and think they have merit too - the signers of the Open Letter are basically all liberal writers, or people with some kind of platform. They're not "silenced". Often, the criticism these people receive is well-earned. And glancing at those two essays Cain just posted I am basically in agreement, with some caveats.

I don't think this is really a "free speech" issue (as the Guardian article frames it), because what we're talking about isn't government censorship, and it's not JUST about the long-tail consequences of deplatforming the alt-right.. and the Open Letter isn't claiming that people should just get to say stupid shit and not face backlash.

The guts is - to what degree do we tolerate differences of opinion in this charged and polarized political world?

the signers are saying "maybe we should be a bit more tolerant"

cause part of why we have an alt-right right now, IMHO, is because many left wing social circles have a "You're either 100% with us or 100% against us" mentality. So you fall out of step in one place, suddenly you're cancelled, you might as well go hang out with the other cancelled people.

A liberal writer friend of mine (who bemoans Rowling's participation in this, says it makes it really hard to discuss his opinion without being called a TERF apologist) shared some thoughts about the history of censorship in the arts. He urges us to think of cancel culture in the broader context of industry-mandated-self-censorship in media, which is, historically, a blunt weapon that is used to defend norms and the status quo. I won't copy and paste his big essay, but he lists a few places where media industries have formalized a moral code for the arts, and how that's gone wrong:

Quote
The Hays Code of 1934 to 1968 prohibited a vast number of things from being shown in Hollywood film: among it's chief rules were that the bad guys always lost, drugs would not be trafficked, no profanity, ... look, it was bad. I'm going to let NPR do the heavy lifting for me on this one: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93301189 ((Note: The Nature of the Hays Code also made it so that LGBTQ+ characters were usually portrayed as villains or deeply questionable people who were to die, or coded very secretly.))

How about the Comics Code Authority? https://www.cbr.com/comics-code-authority-crazy-rules-comic-book-superheroes/

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) was actually the Video Game Industry trying to get ahead of the game, and they did a pretty good job of creating permissive rules for themselves, but stores will still never stock an Adults Only game. It and the Motion Picture Association of America both exist with rating systems designed to allow them to operate in a world with powerful Moral Guardians™. https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/3/17068788/esrb-ratings-changes-history-loot-boxes

Now, the one thing that each of these things has in common, is that they all began after each of these mediums became popular, and someone considered a Moral Guardian declared "this popular thing is dangerous to children!" What followed were entire art forms being stifled or locked down for years at a time by strange, restrictive, or just plain badly thought out codes. Always their industries self-regulating. And always incredibly arbitrary in nature....

Regardless of J. K. Rowling's inclusion on the open letter, the writers, authors, agents, and producers writing to Harper's have a point: there is a history of dangerous self-censorship that we're in for another round of. In the effort to remove some utter bastards from society's upper crust of entertainment, art, and academia, we can't forget: there's a real danger when you employ censorship to art. Take out the bastards, yes, but be mindful of the dangers to your art. The artists here are concerned about being silenced or otherwise being removed from society for making art and asking questions. And if there's one thing I can say for certain it's this: an artist that cannot push the boundaries of their art and ask hard questions, is an artist that is not being allowed to exist.

So, they used the internet, wrote the Harper's Letter, and gave the world a warning. Usually we don't GET a warning. Usually we just get a Hays code. That's something to keep in mind. The Moral Guardians™ are always watching. They are ALWAYS afraid for the Children. They will find the gap in this crisis, and they will jam their fingers in it wherever they can. Because the key thing you need to remember: the Moral Guardians™ sometimes exist to keep people safe, and have occasionally done this. But mostly, they exist to protect the world from any idea they deem dangerous.

Always, always, always view a Moral Guardian™ in the art world with suspicion. Because usually, they want to tell you what to think, not how to protect anyone at all.

now -- is cancel culture the same thing as censorship? does us cancelling JK rowling mean that we are building the new Hays code? ehhh probably not, but

that last line is not a myth

I think we all know a few people who get off on the act of cancellation. They use the rhetoric of tolerance and inclusion to fight their personal battles.

On a personal note - as someone who plans larp events - sometimes navigating these complex social issues is a minefield. For example, I'm running these 1-shot larp events, and it's SUPER EASY to cancel me. With 1-shots, you don't build up an audience over time; most of my ticket sales come from word of mouth, my games live or die by reputation. And objections against me don't necessarily have to be valid, and I might not get any opportunity to respond.

Last fall, two groups of people had a little territorial battle over which one of them gets to play my game. One group put up a bunch of posts trash talking my game and calling me out because I had not posted a notice that a certain player was banned. (note that I hadn't even started selling tickets yet and the game was still 14 months away, so deciding on a ban list, much less publishing one, was pretty low on my list...) (also, ban lists aren't generally public, so insisting that I publish one is weird)

They demanded that this player be banned because they had conflicts with them at previous larps and decided this person was 'toxic'. (and that may have merit, but I was basically coerced into agreeing by making shitposts about my game)

Years have passed since the conflict, and that player (who is, incidentally, PoC) had made a serious personal effort to learn from her past behavior and grow. But if she registers for a larp event where these other people play, they will use every weapon available to either get her banned or tank the game. She has no theater to demonstrate her growth. She can't get herself uncancelled.

They're not saying "if she comes, we're not coming". They're saying "if you let her attend, we will tell EVERYBODY that your game is a missing-stair hideout and that you take no action to remove abusers and bullies from your game". Meanwhile, if I DO ban her, then my entire ban list consists of one PoC, during a time when we larp runners are doing our damndest to make larps more friendly for PoC. Scylla and Charibdys.

These arguments, which are sometimes little more than petty territorial clique-battles, always use the language of sensitivity and inclusion, protecting the marginalized. Cause not everybody who gets "cancelled" is a TERF. Sometimes they're just artists who asked a tough question. Or didn't allow themselves to be pressured by social norms.

I am in agreement with everything posted above, except for the PewDePie thing.  When you publicly Nazi, that in fact makes you a Nazi.

The most fucked up part about this whole subject is that yeah, it not only can become a witch hunt, but the entire thing took about 10 minutes for the alt-right to weaponize.  I think most people even know this has happened, but they can't DO anything about it, because to NOT react to a cancellation order is to yourself be cancelled.

It's fucking idiocy of the first order, and people should be ashamed of themselves.

Quote from: Cramulus on July 09, 2020, 03:58:02 PM

I think we all know a few people who get off on the act of cancellation. They use the rhetoric of tolerance and inclusion to fight their personal battles.

Oh, my, yes.   :lulz:

Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 09, 2020, 04:26:18 PM
I am in agreement with everything posted above, except for the PewDePie thing.  When you publicly Nazi, that in fact makes you a Nazi.

Without going down that rabbit hole again, for me that keeps coming back to the context: having a pair of Indian people holding up a sign saying "Death to Jews" for five dollars, isn't very different than the guy who uses screen cast in time square to put up scat porn on the big screens.
He was using something horribly offensive to demonstrate the exploitation or loophole of a system.
Its exploitative. It's gross, its something a 12 year old would think to themselves they are being very clever and funny with, not something a twenty year old with 50 million + followers at the time should think is funny.
I think calling him a Nazi is the leaner punishment on him as it allows him to abdicate the responsibility he has to his audience who are mainly children. This person is literally a moron and not good for your children's consumption

That being said, when I personally cancel people, it is typically after a great deal of thought.

But I don't expect anyone ELSE to cancel someone simply because I have.  I'm not sure if this qualifies as "canceling", though.

Quote from: Faust on July 09, 2020, 04:46:36 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 09, 2020, 04:26:18 PM
I am in agreement with everything posted above, except for the PewDePie thing.  When you publicly Nazi, that in fact makes you a Nazi.

Without going down that rabbit hole again, for me that keeps coming back to the context: having a pair of Indian people holding up a sign saying "Death to Jews" for five dollars, isn't very different than the guy who uses screen cast in time square to put up scat porn on the big screens.
He was using something horribly offensive to demonstrate the exploitation or loophole of a system.
Its exploitative. It's gross, its something a 12 year old would think to themselves they are being very clever and funny with, not something a twenty year old with 50 million + followers at the time should think is funny.
I think calling him a Nazi is the leaner punishment on him as it allows him to abdicate the responsibility he has to his audience who are mainly children. This person is literally a moron and not good for your children's consumption

Depends.  Didn't he later circle right back around to that shit?

Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 09, 2020, 04:47:01 PM
That being said, when I personally cancel people, it is typically after a great deal of thought.

But I don't expect anyone ELSE to cancel someone simply because I have.  I'm not sure if this qualifies as "canceling", though.

nah, I think that's just personal preference


canceling is a public behavior - it involves one group saying "don't support this <thing / person> in any way" and everyone else going "yes, okay"

Quote from: Cramulus on July 09, 2020, 04:57:29 PM

Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 09, 2020, 04:47:01 PM
That being said, when I personally cancel people, it is typically after a great deal of thought.

But I don't expect anyone ELSE to cancel someone simply because I have.  I'm not sure if this qualifies as "canceling", though.

nah, I think that's just personal preference


canceling is a public behavior - it involves one group saying "don't support this <thing / person> in any way" and everyone else going "yes, okay"

I'm comfortable with that definition.

Not quite so comfortable about the results, of course.  It's basically just the appropriation of Amish shunning.  Which in itself is self-referential as hell and just as funny.

I think the only problem I have with it is the lack of a "redemption" feature.

I mean, there used to be a "if they apologize sincerely and show and prove they are doing the work to be better" clause.

Recently, that doesn't seem to be the case.

However, when looking back, there are very few people willing or able to do this, so I guess that's been scrapped. 

Quote from: LMNO on July 09, 2020, 06:10:19 PM
I think the only problem I have with it is the lack of a "redemption" feature.

I mean, there used to be a "if they apologize sincerely and show and prove they are doing the work to be better" clause.

Recently, that doesn't seem to be the case.

However, when looking back, there are very few people willing or able to do this, so I guess that's been scrapped.

Well, yeah.  If you forgive that OTHER bastard, then I have to question your suitability.

And there were never people willing to to that.  Because this isn't about actual moral standing.  I mean, I am sure some people have honest to god qualms about really questionable people, but in a large portion of the instances I've seen, it's the same old bullshit as 2013.  If I am the loudest inquisitor and those around me fear me turning on them, then I am the chief swinging dick of this here counterculture bubble.

That's all there is to it, and all there really ever was to it.  Just plain old monkey games.

Dan Harmon is the only one that immediately springs to mind, and I think he was able to overcome the stigma.  There was another director who beat the alt-right weaponization of it, when they tried to "get" him by digging up decades-old edgelord troll posts.

But that's about it, I think.

So, it's just like any other portion of the counterculture:  By the time you've heard of it, it's been shrink-wrapped and bar-coded by somebody.  Maybe for cash, maybe for power, maybe just for validation.  And, LMNO, while I have known you for the better part of 2 decades and believe that you are legitimately concerned, most people I have seen are cynical as all hell about this sort of thing, and use it to prop up their own MysticWicks™ micro-community, complete with insanely hilarious fetishization of PoC, which is probably insulting as hell to anyone not setting themselves up an an internet monarch.

My favorite one is "I know you don't owe me an answer and probably don't have emotional time for this, but <insert question>", right alongside "Don't presume to friend request PoC, just follow them" which just SPANKS of "I want to hear them speak, but I for god's sake don't want to be seen friended to them.

It's cringetastic.  It's embarrassing to look at.  It's also now court ritual, and so every time I look at Facebook, I cringe so hard my colon bruises my sinuses.

Quote from: LMNO on July 09, 2020, 07:56:34 PM
Dan Harmon is the only one that immediately springs to mind, and I think he was able to overcome the stigma.  There was another director who beat the alt-right weaponization of it, when they tried to "get" him by digging up decades-old edgelord troll posts.

But that's about it, I think.

yeah he really got in front of it voluntarily, owned it

Nobody dragged him to it

I heard about Harmon's misogynistic fuckup from Harmon himself - and you could tell how genuine it was

I want to make a few points:

ContraPoints is in fact truscum. This isn't a debatable thing for the same reasons that JK Rowling being a TERF isn't. She has consistently said the same things about "trans trenders" that truscum do, even if she doesn't use identical words.

I imagine Rowling would object to the word TERF being applied to her, but it is not up for debate. The specific language used isn't the issue, either. It's about a pattern of behavior and belief that ContraPoints clings to.

Also, "outed a trans woman in the hopes she would be killed" is not a "controversial figure", that's only a step short of the kind of gay bashing that killed Matthew Shepard, and supporting that person or being friends with that person when they say they have no regrets except that their target is still alive makes you a fucking horrid beast. So let's just settle that point.

Do not get the facts confused just because mass media is more sympathetic to the lady with internalized transphobia and her misogynistic piece of shit friend.



Next!



Cancelling is, as mentioned, a group thing. I know there are people here who consume media I can't support. With a very few exceptions, this doesn't bother me even when it's about me, because it is a personal decision to boycott something.

That said, regarding those exceptions: I hope no one here listens to Burzum?

Good.

Cancelling someone is about that person being a threat. The fact they are known and notable makes them a threat. They are horrible beyond mere human failings, they have chosen a damaging path and are actively seeking to use their platform to cause extreme harm.

J. K. Rowling has passed that level. (I'll come back to this.)

Graham Linehan has passed that level. (But give me a moment here)

Varg Vikernes has always been above that level. (If you need an explanation after googling the name, consider high velocity auto-trepanation, and fuck you.)

I trust that this list makes sense, so far? Good. Here's the thing.

With works involving a large number of people, the only time it's worth cancelling the work with the creator is when the work itself is beyond redemption. Varg's work is about killing untermenschen, and Linehan's later work is about calling social workers and emergency shelters pedophiles to destroy the safety of the people relying on those.

But Father Ted, while fantastically awful in a number of ways, is not Linehan's later work. It isn't urgently, unforgivably bad, it isn't a danger to the world.

Rowling is a special case. She's fantastically racist in Harry Potter, and her latest work is transphobic to the point of using a pen name associated with the invention of conversion therapy and having whole sections devoted to the torture of a trans woman who is depicted as a drug addicted homeless sexual deviant who needs to be destroyed for the good of society.

There is no morally defensible (morally ambiguous, perhaps) way to enjoy Harry Potter in the current political climate, and enjoying her latest works is absolutely despicable.

That said:

If you like Harry Potter, we can still talk. The racism is a step or two removed from the undeniable, it's conceivable to see people missing it.

If you like her work as Robert Galbraith, I will twist you into a knot and kick you off a cliff, because that work is transparently, blatantly, entirely about my very own death (and that of those like me) and has literally nothing else to it.

If a movie gets made and someone I know watches it, they are dead to me, because that movie would like to see me dead.

This goes for any person at all whose media, regardless of popularity or influence or quality, is based in whole or in part on tormenting or murdering innocent people. (But note: murder is more than just a knife or a gun, torture is more than thumbscrews and breaking on the wheel.) Before that point is reached, we can settle for loudly telling them to fuck off when they open their face in public.

I hope this has made my positions on cancelling people and media (which are different things!) clear.

Varg asshole needs a brick.  In the brains.

I am less than surprised at Rowling's new descent into bigotry, and I have purged my library and videos of her stuff the same as I did with Orson Scott Card:  Even if it weren't a moral issue, I can't enjoy their work anymore.

For me, with Card, it was before I was even aware on a conscious level of his horrible homophobia.  It was the Book Empire, in which he patiently explained that left of center people are not mentally capable of loving their country, or of serving in the military (it should be mentioned that he himself couldn't be bothered to enlist).

The fact that I later realized what a bigot he is in other ways didn't cause me any work, because I'd already destroyed every copy of his work that I owned.

I have never heard of Graham Linehan.  Off to look him up.

Oh, shit.  He wrote Black Books.

Bye, Graham.

And The IT crowd and Father Ted.
Father ted is fantastic, there is no truer depiction of rural ireland and it doesnt belong to him, it belongs to the cast and everyone involved.
Never liked black books, but each person involved has had a good comic career

Quote from: Faust on July 09, 2020, 11:11:04 PM
And The IT crowd and Father Ted.
Father ted is fantastic, there is no truer depiction of rural ireland and it doesnt belong to him, it belongs to the cast and everyone involved.
Never liked black books, but each person involved has had a good comic career

I only saw eps 1 & 2, and I laughed myself sick.

But now I have no interest in seeing any more.  I don't demand this of anyone else, I just lost interest.

Father Ted is indeed outstanding.

Cram, I'm still not convinced most of the signatories of the Harpers letter are not projecting their own petty battles on this. You really have to be in the Twittersphere to see it, but these people get dragged daily for their usually stupid hot takes, then they cry "persecution" at getting dragged, then they summon their flying monkeys to go after random members of the public for dragging them (or further, such as Rowling's legal threats show), then they go back to their highly paid jobs in the media where they write "cancel culture is terrible, smh" articles about being terrorized by The Masses on social media.

It's a whole thing, and it's been going on for a few years now.

In cases where it doesn't involve high-powered media personalities who still retain easy access to multiple outlets I'm willing to perhaps take the accusation more seriously, as with the larping example you gave. But for the most part complaints about "cancel culture" are just repackaged "SJW" complaints, which is to say repackaged "PC culture gone mad" complaints. It's already a weaponised term being wielded by reactionaries to dismiss any kind of criticism or denying them access to platforms, I don't see any need to feed into that narrative by looking for the occasional elements of truth in a large sea of bullshit.

Quote from: Cain on July 10, 2020, 02:02:41 AM
Father Ted is indeed outstanding.

Cram, I'm still not convinced most of the signatories of the Harpers letter are not projecting their own petty battles on this. You really have to be in the Twittersphere to see it, but these people get dragged daily for their usually stupid hot takes, then they cry "persecution" at getting dragged, then they summon their flying monkeys to go after random members of the public for dragging them (or further, such as Rowling's legal threats show), then they go back to their highly paid jobs in the media where they write "cancel culture is terrible, smh" articles about being terrorized by The Masses on social media.

It's a whole thing, and it's been going on for a few years now.

In cases where it doesn't involve high-powered media personalities who still retain easy access to multiple outlets I'm willing to perhaps take the accusation more seriously, as with the larping example you gave. But for the most part complaints about "cancel culture" are just repackaged "SJW" complaints, which is to say repackaged "PC culture gone mad" complaints. It's already a weaponised term being wielded by reactionaries to dismiss any kind of criticism or denying them access to platforms, I don't see any need to feed into that narrative by looking for the occasional elements of truth in a large sea of bullshit.

All of this.

Quote from: altered on July 09, 2020, 10:38:48 PM
I want to make a few points:

ContraPoints is in fact truscum. This isn't a debatable thing for the same reasons that JK Rowling being a TERF isn't. She has consistently said the same things about "trans trenders" that truscum do, even if she doesn't use identical words.

I imagine Rowling would object to the word TERF being applied to her, but it is not up for debate. The specific language used isn't the issue, either. It's about a pattern of behavior and belief that ContraPoints clings to.

Also, "outed a trans woman in the hopes she would be killed" is not a "controversial figure", that's only a step short of the kind of gay bashing that killed Matthew Shepard, and supporting that person or being friends with that person when they say they have no regrets except that their target is still alive makes you a fucking horrid beast. So let's just settle that point.

Do not get the facts confused just because mass media is more sympathetic to the lady with internalized transphobia and her misogynistic piece of shit friend.

I've watched the transtrenders video, the first ten minutes is her opening with a character embodying those stereotypes, and if you never watched any more than that it would be the take away, the rest of the video is not only dismantling that, but pointing out any exclusionary dialog in the transgender community undermines it as a whole, she explicitly calls truscum people a problem.

On the Buck Angel thing, I watched her response on this too, its close to three hours, it wasn't her suggestion, she knew there was something that people disliked him for but not the exact details but thought it was safe because all he was doing was reading a two line quote of Roger Waters.

Maybe you are seeing something I'm not, because I cant substantiate what you are saying from her videos

Quote from: Cain on July 10, 2020, 02:02:41 AM
Cram, I'm still not convinced most of the signatories of the Harpers letter are not projecting their own petty battles on this. You really have to be in the Twittersphere to see it, but these people get dragged daily for their usually stupid hot takes, then they cry "persecution" at getting dragged, then they summon their flying monkeys to go after random members of the public for dragging them (or further, such as Rowling's legal threats show), then they go back to their highly paid jobs in the media where they write "cancel culture is terrible, smh" articles about being terrorized by The Masses on social media.

It's a whole thing, and it's been going on for a few years now.

that's fair, I am relatively ignorant of twitter weather patterns

Quote
In cases where it doesn't involve high-powered media personalities who still retain easy access to multiple outlets I'm willing to perhaps take the accusation more seriously, as with the larping example you gave. But for the most part complaints about "cancel culture" are just repackaged "SJW" complaints, which is to say repackaged "PC culture gone mad" complaints. It's already a weaponised term being wielded by reactionaries to dismiss any kind of criticism or denying them access to platforms, I don't see any need to feed into that narrative by looking for the occasional elements of truth in a large sea of bullshit.

Yeah, that's a good cleave -- I think I should probably distinguish between what's going on at the top of pop culture with influential people versus what's going on down at the personal level. Cause I think what I'm talking about is less about bigshot media figures and more about what's going on with regular people.

Like over in the Larp universe, I run a viking themed game, which draws alllll sorts of weird white-supremecist figures out of the woodwork. We have to be on guard for them all the time; also, our community has more PoC and trans people than any other larp community I've seen, BECAUSE we use a heavy hand to weed out problem figures. I would love to share some of the unhinged frothy responses we've got after banning people for saying racist shit. We also don't shy around telling people "listen, you probably shouldn't come to this game" if their personal politics are not a good fit for the community. (like if you make jokes about people's chosen pronouns.. you're not gonna get along with anybody here)

But with that power to cancel people comes the responsibility to do it fairly. We do make mistakes. Last season, we gave a warning to a guy because we thought he was dabbling in white supremacy but it turned out he was just a regular pagan weirdo, and him making people "uncomfortable" was more a function of their paranoia than his malice. We have to constantly on watch to not let the safety mechanisms become subsumed by regular social politics.

Likewise, sometimes we shove people out of the community... and they're genuinely sorry and make an attempt to learn from what they did wrong. We are trying to develop a community vibe where someone can eventualy come back. Where we can recognize growth and change. We leave room for, as roger put it, "a redemption arc".

There are people back-stage who have made mistakes in their life, and faced public backlash ... and now they are a trusted community leader. I think the turnaround story is beautiful. We don't see it enough.

Yeah, I'm a lot more sympathetic to the average person getting dragged up in some kind of storm. In fact, I'd argue that is very similar to what the bigshot names, like Rowling or Bret Stephens, routinely inflict on their relatively unknown critics. When you have someone like Bret Stephens who has, for example, an NYT column, threatening to get someone fired by falsely claiming they made a racist comment, that has a chilling effect on all criticism and mockery of that person. That Stephens routinely complains about "free speech" being threatened by students, and was himself threatening a University professor, that was just the icing on the cake.

Unfortuantely I'm convinced that at this point the phrase itself has been entirely hijacked by alt-right chuds and mainstream media gatekeepers.

As for the larp...with AC: Valhalla coming out later on, I wish you luck. I know there are people in Norse culture/historical and pagan communities doing good work to stamp out that particular element, but the combination of gaming and Norse history is going to bring out the worst in some people and I can only see that building as the game nears release (I'm not a fan of painting Alfred the Great - possibly the only king in this country who earned that title - as a potential villain either, but I'll wait to see the game plot, as I know AC writers are tricksy hobbitses sometimes).

Quote from: Cain on July 10, 2020, 02:06:55 PM
(I'm not a fan of painting Alfred the Great - possibly the only king in this country who earned that title - as a potential villain either, but I'll wait to see the game plot, as I know AC writers are tricksy hobbitses sometimes).

Those biscuits, though.

Overbaking things to the point of tastelessness is probably an English tradition because of Alfred. It means he was an innovator.

I have to admit I'm very uncomfortable with a story which depicts blonde-haired, blue-eyed, tall Nordic invaders as the heroes, and the weird combination of Saxon, Celt and imported Roman culture as the enemy by contrast (Alfred was high-handed and no doubt aggravatingly pious...but that's searching the bottom of the barrel for "bad qualities"), but to their credit, the AC writers are usually more subtle than that and have had no problems depicting both sides as flawed in the past.

heh, someone was trying to take the piss out of viking larps

they were like "So uhhh... do you ever talk about how the vikings were slavers, or do you just white wash it?"

we were like "Yes. Literally every pre-game workshop. Vikings were not good people. Our game is not about becoming a hero. Even the 'innocent people' being raided by the vikings are total assholes by modern standards."

Quote from: Faust on July 10, 2020, 08:49:06 AM

Quote from: altered on July 09, 2020, 10:38:48 PM
I want to make a few points:

ContraPoints is in fact truscum. This isn't a debatable thing for the same reasons that JK Rowling being a TERF isn't. She has consistently said the same things about "trans trenders" that truscum do, even if she doesn't use identical words.

I imagine Rowling would object to the word TERF being applied to her, but it is not up for debate. The specific language used isn't the issue, either. It's about a pattern of behavior and belief that ContraPoints clings to.

Also, "outed a trans woman in the hopes she would be killed" is not a "controversial figure", that's only a step short of the kind of gay bashing that killed Matthew Shepard, and supporting that person or being friends with that person when they say they have no regrets except that their target is still alive makes you a fucking horrid beast. So let's just settle that point.

Do not get the facts confused just because mass media is more sympathetic to the lady with internalized transphobia and her misogynistic piece of shit friend.

I've watched the transtrenders video, the first ten minutes is her opening with a character embodying those stereotypes, and if you never watched any more than that it would be the take away, the rest of the video is not only dismantling that, but pointing out any exclusionary dialog in the transgender community undermines it as a whole, she explicitly calls truscum people a problem.

On the Buck Angel thing, I watched her response on this too, its close to three hours, it wasn't her suggestion, she knew there was something that people disliked him for but not the exact details but thought it was safe because all he was doing was reading a two line quote of Roger Waters.

Maybe you are seeing something I'm not, because I cant substantiate what you are saying from her videos

It's what she says on Twitter. The videos are for mass consumption, the Twitter is for being a piece of shit, just like with every other celebrity bigot.

Ah that explains it, will take a look

So, just as a bookend to the Harpers letter itself, this guy (and Bari Weiss) are both signatories

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ec1YA5zXkAEjy_A?format=jpg&name=900x900)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ec1YA56XsAAdEyr?format=jpg&name=900x900)

Nothing more needs to be said, I think.

Alright, one more thing (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/illiberalism-cancel-culture-free-speech-internet-ugh.html?fbclid=IwAR3bpxJxMAqJsiIrn6CwEJBh7CyTuxMKMZijrFzY3TbZu7jU3__gtlgeKHI) before I let this thread die. This article is quite good as it picks up on two points that are not often considered in this debate (good faith argumentation and the role of Twitter) and combines the two.

QuoteNow, you may wonder: Doesn't this world-weary presumption that you know how arguments will go lead to paranoid readings and meta-debates that seem totally batshit to onlookers who aren't internet-poisoned? Yup! And that crosses over into real-life engagements too, since at this point it would be foolish to insist that online patterns aren't having offline effects. Take "All Lives Matter." Most people by now understand how the phrase works to undermine social justice protests, but for a long time, it did exactly what it was meant to: It made people who knew what it was actually saying seem paranoid and crazy for objecting to an anodyne statement that seemed bighearted and self-evident. "Why would you refuse to debate someone who's simply saying that all lives matter?" is the kind of question an Enlightenment subject longing for a robust exchange of ideas might ask. Well, the reason is that most of us have learned, through bitter experience in the mirror-halls of the internet, that it would be a waste of time. It probably wouldn't be a true exchange. We've tried. We've watched others try. And we know by now what "All Lives Matter" signals, and that what it signals is orthogonal to what it says. Your fluency in this garbage means you take shortcuts: Maybe, if you've been online a lot, you don't even bother to refute the text anymore. You leap to the subtext—which is that black people don't deserve public advocacy or concern despite being disproportionately abused and killed by police. So maybe you don't argue. Maybe you just call that position racist and call it a day.

To outsiders, that leap will look absolutely nuts. But that's the point of a certain kind of troll-poisoned political messaging: to make the other side look paranoid and unhinged. It's certainly what all the coded Nazi signals are for—the 14 words, the numbers, the OK hand sign that both is and isn't a white power sign, the boogaloo junk. They're all ways to divorce surface meaning from intentional subtext. And they work. Try explaining any of these to someone who isn't online; convince them that Hawaiian shirts are the costume of choice for members of an extremist movement hoping to start a second civil war. Hawaiian shirts!

Yes, this dynamic is very bad for discourse. Yes, it inhibits intellectual exchange. Yes, it makes productive dissensus almost impossible. But that isn't because of "cancel culture" or "illiberalism." It's because in this discourse environment, good-faith engagement is actually maladaptive. If you tried to carefully explain to every single person who posts All Lives Matter on the internet why they shouldn't and how they might not know that it sounds racist, you'll lose your mind. Many of them know what they're saying and are doing so on purpose. The ones who do it innocently are rare. You could engage in good faith in hopes of finding the latter, but instead, people do something pretty rational given the context (and the volume of stuff they have to sort through): They take shortcuts. Filter. Classify. All Lives Matter = racist. Deadnaming someone = transphobe. If these exchanges feel abrupt and supercharged, it's because a lot of people are at the end of their rope anyway—if you'd spent years fielding the same devil's advocate arguments about the inferiority of your race or gender or sexuality, even a hint of one of those talking points might tempt you to shut the discussion down too.

It's possible and likely that knowledge gaps between people who are online too much and folks who aren't are making things a lot worse. Someone who isn't online much might be shocked to see people at a protest accusing a nice-looking young man in a Hawaiian shirt of wanting a second civil war. It might indeed look like cancel culture gone mad. He's just standing there! Civilly! Offering support to Black Lives Matter protesters, of all things! Can't we all, whatever our disagreements, come together in support of a good cause?

It's also true that people who've learned to read through texts (to whatever bummer of a subtext we're used to finding there) can overdo it. We sometimes skip the content of the text itself and reflexively fast-forward to the shitty point we "know" is coming even if maybe it isn't. This will frequently aggravate the other party, especially if they weren't headed in that direction; it sucks to have people assume the worst about you. That's all pretty bad for a healthy discourse, but it's a learned response to a platform that has fundamentally skewed the cost-benefit analysis of engaging. The rational move has become to presume bad faith.

I like those insights!

I'm a bit surprised it's coming from Slate.  Then again, ever since they started insisting on subscriptions to read most of their articles, I've stopped visiting the site.

This is a great look at how the anger at Cancel Culture circles back around to sea-lioning and the other shit in the Inaccessibility thread: they're functionally the same thing.

And fighting cancel culture is a stalking horse for being aggressive and hateful to marginalized groups without consequence: up to and including consequences so little as being ignored by the person you're targeting.

Why would they want that? After all, that puts them in danger if they push too far, right?

Well.

TERFs and white supremacists have this little game they play. If you had a bully in school, it'll be very familiar.

It's called "let's be outrageously shitty in a targeted, long haul campaign of harassment that goes on exclusively in deniable terms and/or when no one is looking".

The object is to get the target to defend themselves in public, and to then point at that because to someone who wasn't paying attention, it was unprovoked, or minimally provoked. Thus your target looks unhinged, aggressive and dangerous.

That sort of thing is how you set the floor for "subhumanity" and genocide, at the greatest extreme.

Great find, Cain.

So how do we fight that sort of thing?  It sounds like the right is winning, which is very bad news for a lot of people.

Quote from: Pergamos on July 18, 2020, 02:12:51 AM
So how do we fight that sort of thing?  It sounds like the right is winning, which is very bad news for a lot of people.

rocks

Yes, I think that's the best take I've seen so far.

Quotein this discourse environment, good-faith engagement is actually maladaptive

QuoteThe rational move has become to presume bad faith.

(https://media1.tenor.com/images/2c857b4304e0c8a72a34cf028e9a4d39/tenor.gif?itemid=7396985)



it's interesting because I think we are reaching some kind of tipping point

the language we're using really is insufficient to describe the world we find ourselves in

Or maybe it's that there's no shorthands for it yet. It takes so much semantic unpacking to even explain the OK-sign or the real meaning of All Lives Matter and how that's decoupled from the surface meaning.

Maybe, by 2025, there will be new terminology, new ways of talking about this stuff--less lossy compression.





My fiance works at an elementary school... a few months ago, a kid got suspended for making "racist gestures". I asked what a racist gesture was, and she said it was the OK sign. I was shocked -- they punished a 10 year old child for making the OK sign? In what context was that read as racist? Does the kid even know what it means?? Fiance shrugged and pointed out that it is technically designated as a hate symbol right now, so we treat it like a hate symbol.

Months later, the principal sent out a school-wide memo in support of Black Lives Matter. The only people who got tweaked by that? Parents of the OK-Sign kid.

funny that