Fundraiser tee: #000000 {lives:matter;}

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I code CSS for a living, and I had no idea what this shirt was trying to say…

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No. No. Please don’t. This is so tasteless I don’t even know where to begin.

If you want to help, just donate money or food or books. Here’s a list of places you can go to help without looking like a tonedeaf asshole. (Sorry for the tumblr formatting.)

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It’s telling you that someone with invalid markup (starting an ID with a number) is setting the lives prop to matter, at least until it is overridden in the cascade. /snark

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This makes me wince a little too, because I believe the sentiment behind it is genuine but it comes across as a flippant appeal to hipster irony.

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Yes, that shirt isn’t offensive at all. /s

Also: I’m pretty sure no one is colored #000000, but I could be wrong. #322529 is the next-to-darkest on Von Luschan’s chromatic scale. (The darkest is #1A1D2E, which I have trouble believing is properly calibrated due to the blue. Then again, I didn’t know there was a skin-tone scale until five minutes ago when I looked it up.)

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Every good intention will be appropriately punished.

My damn manufacturer in China is late delivering me 10k #Furgusonstrong bracelets.

1 Like

This wrong on so many levels. Lives do matter, don’t mock it through css code.

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One person’s creatively-doing-good is another person’s wrong-and-mocking.

The only way to not offend anybody’s tender sensibilities on The Internets is to Do Nothing.

…what if it just said “Black Lives Matter”…?

5 Likes

If someone means well but says something unintentionally offensive, should everyone else pretend it’s not offensive? Or should they respond with a gentle “I know you mean well but…” to help the person understand how their comment came across?

I don’t think the shirt designer is a bad person, I’ve been on the other side of the “didn’t mean to offend but did anyway” equation too. But I prefer honesty in those situations so I can avoid doing it again.

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I don’t know if it’s offensive — white guy privilege here — but I do think it’s overly clever for such an emotive subject. Like piers_whyte says above, “Black lives matter” says everything you need to say.

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I can assure you that most people seeing that shirt will translate it as saying NO Lives Matter (if they’re able to translate it at all). 'Cause all those zeros. And, 'cause, most people don’t know code.

10: PRINT “BLACK LIVES MATTER \N”
20: GOTO 10

maybe

The overlap that can translate it just well enough to mistranslate is rather small. The code, while technically invalid, is fairly obvious. The # before the six digits is a dead giveaway.

…could someone who is better than me with CSS selectors look if it is by chance valid and if it could be tweaked if it is not?

My valid CSS suggestion, though harder to read, would be something like:

#people {
color: #000;
visibility: visible !important;
}

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The only thing that saves this is that most people will have no idea what it’s supposed to mean.

If most people understood it, it would be far too embarrassing to wear.

this is wrong, it neither works as code or concept, final.
no human is #000 anyway

i hope we never,never ever should start to refer to skin color as hexes. please bb

1 Like