About 5 years ago a friend of mine was saying, "yeah, it's bad at the universities but it doesn't affect the real world." Pretty funny how quickly things accelerated. I'd like to get off this ride.
This hypersensitivity all started at universities. Eventually those bubble-wrapped students will enter the workforce and eventually will end up in higher positions in HR or PR departments driving those decisions. No surprise there.
Too late. HR has been moving to make us to stop using: blacklist, whitelist, sanity check, and master. It's a frighteningly difficult exercise in doublethink to take a required security course (produced by a third party) that refers to blacklist and whitelist and then having to self censor your own peer discussions about it.
Like three times I've had to figure out what is wrong with my git repo because Xcode switched the default branch from 'master' -> 'main'. Tutorials everywhere no longer work, etc.
We've managed to add even more pointless but required knowledge to programming. Ironically it's the newbies who suffer the most.
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A few days ago in the AsciiDoc mailing list – there was an effort to try to find a new word for "whitespace" (obviously the "white" comes from paper, how you even think of race in this context baffles me).
It's so weird for me to see people complaining about hypersensitivity get so up in arms about a pun.
I just find it so hilariously hypocritical for the crowds that constantly complain about the over-policing of speech to find a light-hearted pun to be so dastardly offensive.
To each their own I guess, but a simple pun doesn't feel like the biggest threat we face...
It's weird for me to imagine people who would be outraged about a joke that played on, for example, a racial stereotype, using "It was a joke." as a defence.
Perhaps you're not such a person, and are not speaking on behalf of such people, but I think that saying "It was a joke." doesn't really address the issue that some people's offensive speech is being silenced, while others' is being celebrated.
I think some jokes can be offensive and other jokes can be not offensive at all. I think that's a subjective call that we all make on a case by case basis.
I think people are well within their rights to tell jokes, and I think others are well within their rights to criticize jokes that they find offensive.
I think if people want to play in the marketplace of ideas, they should wear a helmet because nothing says the marketplace of ideas has to be welcome to any given idea. If you tell a joke, then don't be surprised when people react to your joke.
I also didn't see _any_ criticism that the pastor's joke was offensive. I didn't see any public figures indicating that they were offended by the joke. I just saw people calling him insane, a moron, and an idiot for not knowing that "amen" didn't refer to a singular male person.
> I also didn't see _any_ criticism that the pastor's joke was offensive.
As the article[0] that you linked in another comment made clear in its title: "Some were offended". (Strangely the headline of the article is different from the title, but I think the title is still accurate).
While the article's HTML title does claim some were "offended", neither the headline nor the body of the article included the word "offended", or "offense".
There's not a single quote or statement in that article from a person saying that they found it offensive.
I need a source slightly stronger than the title element of an article that is entirely unsupported to be convinced that there were people offended.
All that being said, I would take more seriously the concerns of someone who was deeply religious that said they found it offensive to make a flippant joke during a prayer than I would the concerns of people who called him a moron for not getting the joke. I still haven't seen anyone say they were offended by the joke, though.
I don't know why you think the journalist just made up their conclusion, but here are a few examples of people finding it insulting / offensive:
"The idea of throwing in a pun, though not a federal crime, is poor form at best and can be viewed as flippant and insulting."[0]
"He has singularly demonstrated the ability to offend everyone possible while reciting what he deemed to be a politically correct prayer calling for unity."[1]
"many are offended on behalf of their politics. ... Instead, let’s be offended and furious on behalf of our God."[2]
I personally think that undermining religious language and activities like prayer, by deliberately misinterpreting and butchering words, is offensive in the same way that burning a flag is (even though I don't think that should be illegal either).
> I don't know why you think the journalist just made up their conclusion
First, I didn't say the journalist made up their conclusion. I stated I hadn't seen evidence of it.
Second, I don't really believe a journalist is in control of the headline and I *certainly* don't think the journalist is in control of the title element of the web version of their article. If it's not in the body of the article, I don't ascribe it to the journalist, but rather an editor.
> by deliberately misinterpreting and butchering words,
Third, I don't think puns are a deliberate misinterpretation of a word at all. It's a play on words that relies on similar sounds of words, but a pun doesn't "interpret" a word. If I say: "What does the fish say when it hits a wall? Dam!" I haven't "misinterpreted" the word "dam" to be an exclamation of surprise. I have made a pun based on the fact that the words "damn" and "dam" sound alike.
> I personally think that undermining religious language and activities like prayer
That's fair. Like I said, I take more seriously the concerns of people who are offended by the concept of making a joke during prayer. I'm willing to hear out those that say that prayer is not an appropriate place for jokes. I do, however, essentially discard and disregard the opinion of anyone that says that the pastor is a moron, or an idiot for not understanding the word "amen".
Basically, it boils down to this: if someone understands it is a joke, and think a joke in that place is offensive, I'm willing to hear you out. If someone doesn't understand that it's a joke, and are mad about the "politically correct" nature of his words, then I don't think they understand the situation properly and ignore their concerns.
> "many are offended on behalf of their politics. ... Instead, let’s be offended and furious on behalf of our God."[2]
This quote seems taken out of context from the onwardinthefaith article. The outrage that they are expressing is expressly not at the joke. Rather, the thing they find offensive and enraging is this contained in this quote:
"We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God and Brahma and God known by many names by many different faiths."
Yes, they note the flippancy of the "amen and awomen" joke, but only really find it offensive in light of his prior comments. They are offended and enraged at the nod toward universalism, and the pun at the end of the prayer confirms that in their opinion he lacks the appreciation for the Lord's majesty.
> Basically, it boils down to this: if someone understands it is a joke, and think a joke in that place is offensive, I'm willing to hear you out. If someone doesn't understand that it's a joke, and are mad about the "politically correct" nature of his words, then I don't think they understand the situation properly and ignore their concerns.
Thank you, I think we agree then.
> Yes, they note the flippancy of the "amen and awomen" joke, but only really find it offensive in light of his prior comments.
Yes, unfortunately it is difficult to isolate one's feeling of being offended from the context in which the words are spoken, which means if someone says multiple potentially offensive things it can be difficult to decide how much offence each word caused.
> “I concluded with a lighthearted pun in recognition of the record number of women who will be representing the American people in Congress during this term as well as in recognition of the first female Chaplain of the House of Representatives whose service commenced this week,” said Cleaver, who led the search committee that selected Grun Kibben, the former chief chaplain of the Navy, for the role.
> “I personally find these historic occasions to be blessings from God for which I am grateful.”
The AsciiDoc example is an interesting one as I've not seen really any discussion about "whitespace" as offensive and cannot really find anything. Add onto the fact that stuff like wikipedia also still refers to it as whitespace as so it does seem like they're going to define their own term for AsciiDoc that'll be at odds with broader community and just begs for newbie confusion.
“In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words -- in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
The fact that main is 33% shorter and more descriptive should be argument enough for it to be the new default, regardless of any issues surrounding sensitivity. You should be able to still set the default to whatever you want if xcode is at all sensible.
The wild thing about the term "master" and the people that want to censor it is how English-language centric it is. It really only has the sensitive connotations it has in English. In Italian for example, maestro is teacher.
My fear is that what today is "we should move away from that term" will in a few short years become "we can't hire them because they typed 'git checkout master' in their live coding interview" and at that point it discriminates against those for whom English is their second language.
This happened to a friend of mine with the word "lynch". In English it is a highly racializes term but in his native tongue, Portuguese, the connotation largely revolves around mob violence committed against rapists and adulterers (just go search for the verb "linchar" and you'll find youtube videos of mob violence against people suspected of rape and adultery).
Well he used that term in a discussion on github back when discussing the changes to a popular open source project's code of conduct about 7-8 years ago and a bunch of cancel culture folks jumped on him and it culminated in them trying to get him fired from his current job. He was lucky that it was long enough ago that his boss brushed it off, but in today's environment he's certain he would have lost his job over using a term in his native tongue that is fully divorced from how people feel about the word in English.
Your point really underscored how idiotically narrow minded and self absorbed these inquisition-like crusades against racial offense sometimes are. The people conducting them in the English-speaking western world seem to not even realize that their entire framing of "inclusiveness" is based on an amusingly simplistic and even unconsciously hypocritical presumption of all linguistic connotations being beholden to English definitions of things. Especially amusing to see this coming from people who otherwise fixate to an insane degree on signalling their embrace for non-western, non-"privileged" cultural values.
Another common example related to yours: in countries with latin languages like spanish or Portuguese, the word for both the color black and black people in a completely generic non-racist way is negro. It literally just means black. A Spanish speaker having said it in the wrong context in an english language setting could easily invite criticism born of the silliness I mentioned above.
The example you brought up is an interesting one because in English the work Black is the accepted term but in Portuguese the word for the color itself (preto) is the pejorative if used to describe people. So essentially the exact opposite of in English. The Portuguese pejorative is the accepted term in English and the English pejorative is the accepted term in Portuguese.
Americans sadly are now indiscriminately exporting their particularly toxic understanding of race and race relationships to other parts of the world and damaging the social fabric of these other countries. It's like introducing a new species of plant that ends up being invasive and destructive like kudzu.
We had an extensive and wasteful discussion about this at my last company over the summer. It was absurd. The proponents of replacing every word that could potentially be offensive have this superstitious view of language as having inherent power that continues from generation to generation. They really believe that a word can carry traces of evil with it over time. Naturally there's zero science behind this.
It's a religion without forgiveness or redemption. And the high priests of this religion will never allow the language to sit they will always find new words to change and replace and shame us with.
I remember a couple decades ago, an "enlightened" fellow college student called one of our British collaborators on a project "African American". Because people around that time started thinking calling someone "black" was offensive.
Lots of this is very English and even US-centric. The lack of awareness and what is effectively an attempt to dominate other cultures in the name of inclusiveness is kinda interesting.
I understand it's not a very common one and can be kind of confusing. Here's a pretty good definition:
"the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time"
In this case, the conflicting belief that these words are okay in the course you are taking, but that these words are not okay if you are discussing the course material.
The etymology of the word has nothing to do with race.[1] There are many uses in the English language where colors are used as descriptors in ways that have nothing to do with race.
Do you think we should ban the terms blackout, blackbody radiation, black holes, black ice, black ops, and black markets? Not everything is about race.
> The symbolism of white as positive and black as negative is pervasive in our culture. Watts-Jones has highlighted many terms with negative meanings that reference blackness. In the English language, she wrote in 2004, color is “related to extortion (blackmail), disrepute (black mark), rejection (blackball), banishment (blacklist), impurity (‘not the driven snow’) and illicitness (black market).”
The point isn't to proof that these words are bad, the point is that people have already called for banning these words. 5-10 years ago you would have had similarly "bad" sources for banning blacklist et al., and yet here we are.
> In Old English, the adjective could mean “very evil or wicked; iniquitous; foul, hateful,” according to the dictionary. The earliest Oxford citation is from a scientific and theological treatise written by a Benedictine cleric in the late 10th century.
Not only that, but those colors have similar associations all over the world, for example in India and Japan. It has to do with nighttime/darkness having foreboding/negative implications.
> Berne notes that the ideas of light=goodness and dark=badness existed in ancient cultures (including Egyptian and Greek), and can be found in Asia and around the globe.
> Joseph Campbell, writing in the journal Daedalus in 1959, says it was the Persian philosopher Zoroaster (circa 600 BC) who put the seal on the concept of darkness being evil.
Yes, black vs white is a very old concept. Why do you think europeans started referring to people from africa as black and themselves as white, when they are really more like pink and brown?
Ever notice that purple foods tend to be called either red or blue (or sometimes black if they're dark purple)? Like red cabbage, red onions, red grapes, blue potatoes[1]. Or for that matter how white grapes are green and black walnuts are brown? How black eyes are usually purple?
English just seems to have a strong preference towards approximating everything with the most basic colors.
Europeans also called native Americans red and Asians yellow, and it probably wasn't because they associated those colors with evil.
All people are shades of brown. White people can be pinkish, but are usually light brown or reddish light brown. When you look at this white man's [2] skin color next to the light brown wood he's working with, he's clearly a darker brown than the wood. But I imagine Europeans didn't want to label races as light brown, medium brown and dark brown.
This is interesting. I plugged them into Google ngram viewer. Whitelist was almost unused until 2000. Blacklist came into use right after the Reconstruction era (may or may not mean anything), but it has two peaks in use: WWI and WWII. I was expecting McCarthyism, but it wasn't as popular as during major wars.
Blacklists's first known usage in English comes from England in the 1600's, specifically referring to a list of people who were involved in the execution of Charles I. Its origin literally has nothing to do with race.
I personally like using “blocklist” instead of “blacklist” but that paper is pretty terrible. It seems more like an opinion piece with a bunch of references to give it authority.
Here’s a critical piece of the “evidence” presented:
“In this context, it is worth examining the origins of the term “blacklist” from the Douglas Harper Etymology Dictionary, which states that its origin and history is:
n.
also black-list, black list, “list of persons who have incurred suspicion,” 1610s, from black (adj.), here indicative of disgrace, censure, punishment (attested from 1590s, in black book) + list (n.). Specifically of employers’ list of workers considered troublesome (usually for union activity) is from 1888. As a verb, from 1718. Related: Blacklisted; blacklisting. [32]
It is notable that the first recorded use of the term occurs at the time of mass enslavement and forced deportation of Africans to work in European-held colonies in the Americas.”
Seriously? We clearly need to rethink the whole academic publishing process.
Excuse me but "person" contains "son" in it which is indicative of gendered childhood, and heteronormative reproduction.
This is highly problematic for children and adults who identify as children who may be struggling with their gender identity; as well as those who chose to reproduce through non-sexual or non-heterosexual mechanisms.
Please refer to them as per-offspring potato heads instead.
What's a terminology to replace 'master' in the case of a 'master list'. I've used 'primary' and 'main', but they both imply the existence of a secondary or other acceptable replacement, which is rarely the case. "Single source of truth" is too cumbersome and often the incorrect context. 'Prime' looks like the best candidate going by synonyms. 'Authoritative' has too many syllables, although gets the point across.
Blacklist and whitelist, when looking at the etymology these terms are obviously problematic, and I happily use block/ban list and allow list. Easy. Even "Green list" and "Red list" would work fine, traffic lights won't mind.
Sanity check, never thought about that one. "Sense check" may have similar connotations, but the word sense, itself, has multiple meanings, so that's got a backdoor. Congruity check? I don't want to have to explain the word every time I ask for someone to "congruity check" a set of data.
This is why you should support New Hampshire's bill HB 544, currently working its way through the NH legislature, and support similar bills that are nascent in other states (off the top of my head: Oklahoma, Iowa, West Virginia, maybe some others I've missed) and, if you're not in those states, contact your elected representatives and push for a similar bill.
The only way this poison is going to be defeated is through the law. In fact, the journalist Chris Rufo argues that much of what's pushed by the CRT activists is likely already illegal under the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act. This needs to be affirmed in the courts.
As someone who grew up in the 90's. I do feel a bit "older" and more conservative even though I never considered myself that way. It makes me take a step back and realize that our belief systems tend to stagnate and I can only imagine how radical my college or high school beliefs may have seemed to older folk.
One of many fun things is that most of the politically correct terms at the time ("retarded", "transvestite", "mentally ill" etc) have now become unspeakably offensive.
> One of many fun things is that most of the politically correct terms at the time ("retarded", "transvestite", "mentally ill" etc) have now become unspeakably offensive.
The euphemism treadmill strikes again.
I'd not heard that "mentally ill" crossed into that territory. What term do they say should be used instead? I'm guessing "neurodiverse."
"Neurodiverse" is code du jour for autism, and HR will be contacting you shortly for the offensive ableism of labeling neurodiversity as mental illness, instead of celebrating it.
You're acting like social attitudes have only progressed in one direction in that time.
The 70s or 60s kid might be raised in a context of peace and love, anti-war sentiment, then be just as shocked to see Ronald Reagan, low taxes, spending cuts for social programs, the religious right, wars of choice, higher wealth disparity, outsourcing in manufacturing and other industries, privatization, young fascists going on tiki marches in favor of the confederacy, on and on ...
Those that were involved in birthing the current brands of radicalism grew up in the 70s and 60s. They are merely reaping the consequences of those beliefs.
It’s dangerous to complain about this stuff. Was at one place that routinely trashed white males, of which I happened to be. Caught hell when I tried to push back. Sadly this seems like it’s becoming the norm.
"It’s dangerous to complain about this stuff." Yep, I'm Latino but when NYC's law was going to make it a crime to call someone an "illegal immigrant" with a $250K fine I didn't even feel safe speaking out against this bad idea. Because I am in tech and high-income so "what do I know". Despite being slurred this way many years ago by a cop and despite assisting some cousins enter the country illegally and being held by a border agent.
All this "privilege checking" makes it difficult to speak out. The least privileged people have existential concerns more significant than our culture war so they don't speak out either. The Woke movement has been hijacked by narcissists. There is no resistance so this will only accelerate in the near term.
In these situations, malicious and over the top affirmation is the safest and most effective form of critique. See Laibach and NSK on how it’s done. Woke hyperliberalism With all it’s terrible contradiction should be an easier target than The authoritarian Socialism of the 80s.
(The author cleverly and deliberately picks up examples from obsolete Christian schisms to avoid derailing the core of the book with any present-day inflammatory topics.)
We are on a serious tangent but I'll make a go at it. At the time a friend of mine felt that it should be a crime for anyone to use the hateful words "illegal alien" but the fine should be small "like $100". His comment which ended the conversation:
"I value language and am thoughtful with my communication. If I can do that why can't others?"
Maybe how I should have responded?: "So you always ask someone's pronouns prior to initiating conversation. You agree to those and should be obliged by law to not error ever?"
Or doing that may have backfired ? Now I am a self-hating Latino and transphobic ? Not a reputation I want and I have no power to change things. So why bother is the natural conclusion.
It's not the only reason people voted for him, but it certainly strengthens his position and chances for 2024....not to mention, the first thing the authoritarian left did after CPAC was to ban his speech from Youtube.
My 70 year old Democrat immigrant Muslim mom is forwarding me Bill Maher segments and complaining about cancel culture of Facebook. She texted me approvingly when Trump banned critical race theory in the federal government.
Yes, this is how Trump, or someone similar, gets elected.
> New York City has banned the term "illegal alien" when used "with intent to demean, humiliate or harass a person," the city said.
That sounds like an important qualification, but I suspect in praxis intent is hard to (dis)prove so it would probably depend on the judge and precedents?
this only applies in workplaces, to landlords, or providers of public accommodations, and this only applies to harassment, its like saying hate crime legislation makes it illegal to be bigoted
whenever something sounds this absurd, read past the headline and you usually find whats actually going on is a lot more reasonable
Sue. That’s creating a hostile work environment. Civil rights laws are still based on actual equality and not critical theory, and racism against white people is a cognizable violation.
All progress we’ve made so far was by talking and understanding one another. Leaving would amount to silencing since the people who left are afraid to make their thoughts public for fear of backlash.
As far as I can tell, historically leaving oppressive places has a better track record of success for individuals than fighting or trying to talk and understand.
(Eg think of the people fleeing North Korea, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Nazi Germany, etc.
Similar, you are better of quitting a bad company, than trying to reform.
Or just quitting twitter instead of 'talking' to people there.)
On a personal level I agree but it's not a moving forward solution to withdraw and stay quiet. I'm talking about the general sense of progress, the one where people are more in balance with other people and that involves understanding eachother and eventually it comes down to talking or some form of communication. Yes, clearly what we're doing at the moment (social media and it's ills) is not only not right but very divisive but that does not meat it's going to be like that forever.
If people move from places that have bad social norms (or bad norms of discussion), like say Twitter, to place that have good norms, like say the Slatestarcodex comments section, the experience of the average person will improve.
The bad places can just quietly whither away when no one goes there anymore.
From an English background, I imagine we are sitting at a meeting. Something that is tabled is between us and under discussion. Something shelved has been removed from the table. What things are Americans visualising here when they say table?
It comes from picking something up to discuss and setting it down when discussion is over. I don't know how many people visualize anything when they say it.
Counterpoint: I graduated from a university still named after the confederacy that held "slave auction" fundraisers all the way into the 80s. I think it's easy to downplay how pervasive racism still is in America, and to imagine that hypersensitivity is the result of "fragility" instead of "constant exposure".
There’s a difference between schools named after the Confederacy and schools named after Abraham Lincoln.
The fact that this bears mentioning points to the general historical ignorance affecting many of these misguided activists, such as those who tore down the statue of Hans Christian Heg in Madison, WI. Heg was a Union soldier and abolitionist who led an anti-slavecatcher militia. He was also a white man, which is presumably why his statue got dragged through the street and beheaded during the height of last summer’s protest violence:
> There’s a difference between schools named after the Confederacy and schools named after Abraham Lincoln.
Given the number of people who make precisely the same complaints that appear in this thread when high schools change their name from "Lee", that difference seems to be lost to many "free speech absolutists".
This is a great argument for why we shouldn’t work in generalities. “Systematic racism” isn’t practically actionable, so it results in Lincoln High getting the same treatment as yours, which apparently held “slave auction” fundraisers relatively recently, and another school which may teach the “Happy Slave” narrative.
1 of those is a high school named after a president that freed slaves, 1 is a high school with a seriously questionable recent past, and 1 is a high school actively perpetuating racist dogma. We shouldn’t be treating them all like what their doing is equally bad
Was your university doing something kind of like Halloween, where people dress as demons to show the demons have no power over them, or was it more enamored with the past?
I can't tell if you mean "eventually they graduate and carry the new ideas into the world" or if you mean "eventually they graduate and buy into into the system and turn into drones like the greasers, hippies, and punks all did."
And it's not like we haven't seen the same pattern before with the Weather Underground. (I do feel obligated to acknowledge that I was one of those people on the "just in the universities" train 5 years ago, so I'm not accusing anyone of a mistake I haven't made myself.)
The Weather Underground was founded by students from the University of Michigan, who spent their college years arguing that people should violently resist the government. When they graduated, they didn't moderate out of these ideas; they doubled down, started an organized bombing campaign, and successfully hit targets including Capitol Hill and the Pentagon.
Unfortunately your only choices today are this or overt neo-Naziism. You have to stake out the most extreme, divisive, fanatical position possible. If you try to be nuanced and rational you get attacked by both sides.
I think social media has a lot to do with it. We created a global communication medium and then programmed it to prioritize the most "engaging" content, which is of course the most triggering and controversial content. I'm wondering how long it will be before people are literally setting themselves on fire for likes and views.
The saddest part is boring but popular ideas like universal healthcare continually get thrown to the wayside by loud idiots who want to demand nonsense like "latinx"
Good observation, I've felt the same since I encountered this new generation of humans who demand changing speech, and use esoteric terminology and demand other people say and not say things. I don't care if someone believes in social constructivism, that we're born blank slates, that words influence perception more than biology, so on and so forth, but I care very much when people who believe these things believe that anyone who questions - who dares question - them is a villain and an enemy who must be stopped.
A focus on symbolisms like statues and children books and language on Twitter or git repos is being embraced by the powerful corporate interests. Something that actually does an enormous positive for racial justice, universal healthcare, takes a back seat.
Identity politics type news stories shot up right at the end of the Great Recession, around the occupy wall Street time, when people were the most infuriated that moneyed interests bailed themselves out at the taxpayers expense. Really makes you think...
Occupy, as derision-worthy as it was, saw a broad coalition of Americans--blacks, whites, latino, straight, gay, trans--all get together to push back against Team Elite.
Then the entirely tiny group of people who control the media (and hate us, apparently) got together and pushed endless identity bullshit on us.
That's a figment of the media. The "far right" and the huge collection of "white supremacists" that have been drummed up as some huge evil plot in America has, as far as I can tell, zero basis in reality.
Note that basically everything done by white people is a "far right" "white supremacist" plot. E.g., AOC refers to the (hilarious) "insurrection" (the unarmed, leaderless one that waltzed into some of the most protected space on earth with nary a problem) as a "white supremacist" plot.
If you buy that, you're an instrument, played like a fiddle.
I see some people say they'd like to be called Latinx. I see no one demand it. I see many more people complain it's used at all.
100% of people who say Latinx support universal health care in my experience. But they have more control over what they say than what their government does.
Only 30% of Latinos have even heard the term Latinx. Using the term is a problem because it’s alienating for someone to use a term for you that you’ve never heard before. Out of the 30% who have heard it, 2/3 think it shouldn’t be used to describe Latinos. Be respectful of people and don’t call them some weird thing some professor made up that the vast majority of affected people either don’t recognize or actively don’t want used to refer to them.
I don't think that way, but that's the wider dynamic I've seen in play for years. On one hand you have 4chan /pol, and on the other hand you have "woke" Twitter mobs. The whole thing seems gamified and the participants all seem to be playing a video game where getting attention or scoring a kill (trolling, offending someone, getting someone cancelled, etc.) is the objective. Gamified social media seems to be increasingly pulling the whole culture along for a ride.
Of course maybe I am succumbing to the "the nuts are always the loudest" effect.
Edit: I don't think the Internet per se is at fault. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of the "algorithmic timeline." Social media isn't neutral. It's programmed to "engage" us, which usually means either offending us or luring us into some kind of cult.
Chan culture isn't algorithmic in this way, but it's organized primarily around influencing algorithmic social media from outside and as such operates within the same algorithmic attention-maximization game paradigm.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it ramped up during COVID and it’s worse in western countries (actually would like to know if wokeness is affecting non-western locked down countries).
Far left and far right identity politics both started ramping up around 2010. There are quantitative measurements based on word counts of some of this. See elsewhere in this thread.
You can leave Twitter and social media alone, but that's no guarantee that Twitter and social media will leave you alone. That's why I think it's so important for everyone who can speak out against this to do so before it metastasizes to the point where you can't say anything anymore.
I think you're right and you're not succumbing to any effects. The nuts are the loudest and wiser people stay quiet, which gets worse when it causes the young and impressionable to think that the nuts have buy-in.
yeah i am afraid of another Robespierre just as much as i am of another Mussolini. and at this point i am not sure which side is closer to taking over.
I’ve been saying for years that if inequality keeps growing then whether we get a far left or a far right totalitarian will depend on which side fields the most compelling demagogue first. The ideology won’t matter as long as pitchforks are being handed out.
I’ve been thinking this kind of thing since the 2008 bank bailouts. I’ve also wondered if that was when America collapsed and we are just living through a slow unwinding period.
The problem wasn’t the crash. Crashes happen. The problem was that banks were bailed out and the we pretended there was a recovery. There wasn’t. It was a largely paper recovery, basically fake. Yes unemployment went down but the quality of the jobs were poor, housing inflation ate any gains, and inequality exploded.
Trumpism was just a superficial symptom. If things don’t improve we will get someone much much worse.
the wider dynamic at play is the loss of trust in institutions due to the internet and the massive information unleashed thru the web.
One can see that same dynamic when the printing press was invented. Suddenly, the old power structure did not control the narrative. Within 100 years of the invention of the printing press in 1450, and its spread by 1500, there was a major conflict all over Europe over very minor religious dogma differences of opinion (wars of religion).
We are about 2/3rds into that cycle with the internet, which was borne around 1960 and came into true widespread use around 2005 (Facebook, etc).
Joining a group that's willing to scream "oppression!" at every convenient target is also living a life of pain. At least if you're sincere, they can only cancel you once.
There's a third option that is neither "publicly align myself with extremists" nor "publicly align myself with the grey area in between", and that is not to participate in the game at all.
Also, I've been on the receiving end of a mob before; "you can only get cancelled once" wasn't exactly true for me. Sure, the public figures who initially called you out will stop eventually -- they know when they've won the battle. But their followers? They're like that annoying kid at school who kept making the same joke long after it was ever considered funny. They'll happily continue harassing you until the end of time (or until you're able to make yourself disappear).
Seriously, the amount of “this” that I see online is 100x what I see in real-life (per interaction). Outrage engagement drives it and if you have found yourself tired of arguing with people you’ve never shared a meal with, just close the tab. Let them be outraged without you.
Have you seen the recent article in the NY Times about labour relations at Smith College, where a black woman who graduated from an elite Connecticut prep school managed to get four local employees fired over allegations of racism and sicced her Twitter army on them? There was an external investigation that found no fault with the fired employees and no systemic racism, yet the solution was to implement sensitivity training for the staff.
Me? I was told by a genderqueer woman at a sister college of Smith during a job interview that she does not get along with older men.
My wife? She is a faculty member at another Amherst area college and was told by a colleague that she is held in high regard because she is BIPOC. That is shit so tasteless that you can't make it up, so it must be true.
The atmosphere at colleges in the Northeast is fucked up beyond description, and playing ostrich is just that, hiding from reality. Unfortunately, reality won't change anytime soon.
Good for you that you can close tabs, unfortunately that article is an account of daily life for many academics and university staff. Read it, you cannot discuss labour relations at colleges in the Northeast (and I guess many Silicon Valley companies) without taking this article into account.
There might be some interesting macro-scale effects if Cancel Culture causes conservative Democrat voters to move to purple counties/states and turns them slightly but consistently blue.
Or we could be have like sane rational people and not indulge either sides insane society destroying extremes. you don't defeat extremism by adding to polarizing the situation even more.
The irony of downvotes on this above comment above mine comment.
There is a third option. Most people are stuck with this. It is staying quiet and saying nothing. Because there is unity in extreme right. And there is unity in extreme left. And there is no unity in the center so these extremes can pick off each individual center person who says something.
> A fiercely independent thinker, Viereck (who died in 2006 at age 89) was mostly without a political home.
I haven't finished reading it, but it doesn't seem all that encouraging as a source of ideas for building a center if the article's protagonist never succeeded.
I’ve been wondering if a radical, dare I say even Trumpian, centrist politician who is willing to pick vitriolic fights with both extremes is just what our times demand.
I really believe that Republicans can elect some of the craziest Qanon believers precisely because the Democrats refuse to forcefully denounce the craziest whims of their radical base, and are tainted by association, even though almost none of the national-level Democrats are nearly so extreme.
What data did your friend use to come to that conclusion? Would you be willing to share so we can come to our own conclusions based on the evidence presented?
Can you participate in one (1) conversation without asking for data or studies? Obviously he doesn't have a list of articles his friend used to make an offhand comment.
I wouldn't call it "obvious" that someone would accept another's opinion without any info to back it up and then extol it, though it's very interesting to me that you did.
I didn't accept or reject his opinion. I pointed out that you're acting like an unsocialized ass when you say shit like "Wow, got a source for what some other guy based his comment on 5 years ago?"
I don’t understand GP’s comments. It’s like they are so obstinate or cargo cult fixated on a good idea and messed it up so badly to think that asking for evidence is appropriate everywhere.
“Do you have data to support your stated preference for chocolate ice cream?”
A lot of people have cottoned on to how important hard evidence is for forming informed opinions. Unfortunately, many of them have yet to learn that you can judge a conclusion on its own merit without a bibliography of every idea that led to it.
