When did being polite and decent and thoughtful become something to mock?
My issue with this is who is the definer of “polite and decent and thoughtful”? I mean, the polite and non-violent earlier protests at Ferguson were rarely described as such (and look at what good they did, besides). Even Martin Luther King, JR, wasn’t considered “polite and decent and thoughtful” by a lot of people – until after he was dead, and now suddenly white people seem to adore him, which I find interesting.
Anyway, just a tangential thought.
Honestly, @zieroh, I think the point is that it’s not your website, nor your blog and therefore not your rules. I’ve also had to remind myself of that. And basically what @beschizza just said while I was in the process of typing this.
It’s presented in a mocking tone, but that does not make it bullying. It is perfectly acceptable to mock someone’s opinions, especially when they are egregiously ignorant. It doesn’t count as bullying because it targets merely those opinions, and not the person or anything about them beyond the opinions they hold.
See, thing is, guys, BB’s comments have never been an open or free platform. We have always had a brutally oppressive moderator–recently upgraded to supernatural creature of 19A0s myth–keeping racists, sexists, homophobes and various other perfectly civilized assholes out of our self-referential circle-jerk.
The thing is, though, it’s so easy to get away with being all of those things here, because we love entertaining assholes. Ones with panache and good humor get to hang around. It prevents stagnation. It surprises us with its charm and incisive differentiation. We cultivate them, even: I’m sure one or two of you regulars will have wondered now and again “why isn’t that complete asshole banned?” Because they’re marked for survival.
Until something goes wrong, obviously! But hey. What’s rule 1? Be Cool.
I’m very much aware of that, thanks. And that’s not at all the point that I was attempting to make. You won’t find me screaming about free speech, since I am acutely aware as to the first word of the first amendment.
But I do find it disheartening to be banned even while being civil (and truthful) by someone who didn’t bother to absorb what I actually wrote.
Welllllll, if you were actually nit-picking about some weird grammar issues while also daring them to ban you… I mean come on, it’s just as annoying when someone says, “Now, I know you’ll disagree with me, but!” and such-like…no one likes that person…don’t be that person… quite frankly, you made your own bed. Shrug!
I agree with the OP, the banhammer comes down far too frequently (and over increasingly silly shit) for my tastes. I’m not a particularly active member of the forum though, so I guess I can live with it.
I can see where it would be “victim blaming” if it were said, “MB deserved it because he robbed the store”, and I agree - MB should not have met the fate he did because he robbed the store and was walking down the street after the fact. My understanding is that his actions of assaulting a police officer, making said officer fear for his life by going for his gun, etc, resulted in the outcome everybody’s got their panties in a wad over. For that, I don’t see how MB was a ‘victim’ - if you go for an officer’s gun, and in the process beat the hell out of said officer, at the very least you’re going to get (and deserve) one hell of an ass-whuppin’. At the very most, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect firearms to be discharged in your general direction immediately after behavior like that. The officer, at the time, went with the latter option. Whether it was ‘racism’, ‘overreaction’, ‘adrenaline clouding his judgement’, whatever, is known only to the officer himself. I don’t think shooting someone who is obviously physically superior to you, who went for your gun while beating you up in the process, is an unreasonable use of force on anybody’s part - officer, gun owning civilian, etc. Regardless of the races of the people involved, my opinion on this is firmly in the “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” camp. If that’s ban-worthy, so be it and I’ll see y’all in a month
Okay, let’s call it mocking instead of bullying. I’ve certainly been guilty of same on more than one occasion. And having been guilty myself, I can state with authority that it represents a failure to take the proverbial high road.
I wasn’t nitpicking about grammar. I was pointing out to Cory that he was deliberately conflating two different things in order to make a point, rendering that point somewhat less than valid. And that’s not why Beschizza banned me – at least, it wasn’t why he said he banned me.
It exemplifies the genre perfectly: despite obvious bigotry and victim-blaming, the correspondent insists they merely disagreed; affects a stance of sad, regretful disappointment at the necessity of their departure; asserts a lifelong familiarity with Boing Boing; yet it shocked by editorial positions that have been relentlessly described in more than 100,000 postings over the last 15 years.
The jackhammer jill pic attached to the email, as if to suggest: have you seen this? Would you just look at it?
Which probably would have been fine on its own, until you started preemptively telling them you’ll totally get banned for daring to have an opinion. That shit is annoying. Maybe don’t do that? Even I don’t do that!
I would disagree. It seems to me there’s far too much I’m 100% right and you’re 100% wrong style discussion happening in the world these days. The truth of nearly any situation is almost always closer to the middle than either side would like to admit. So long as both sides are commenting without calling someone the n-word or something, most discussion is good, no matter whether you agree or not.
I’d much rather read a discussion here than on most sites. Freedom of speech isn’t freedom to abuse. The idea behind freedom of speech is to create a “marketplace of ideas” not to facilitate the shouting of inanities at each other. Limits are placed on hate speech and other incendiary comments and that’s a good thing because overall the discussion will be of better quality. It’s not like the rules are hidden in any case. If you have a problem with not reading and writing hateful bullshit, maybe head over to stormfront or something?
Victim-blaming can be really frakking triggering, when we have survived violence, and we talk about the violence, and we get told we must have done something to deserve the violence.
It isn’t much better, when we have survived violence, and we have another story about other violence, and we get told that the other victim must have done something to deserve the violence.
It enables people to dismiss any given victim of an injustice, and thereby to dismiss the very existence of an injustice.
It means that people find ways to blame Eric Garner for being choked to death and Tamir Rice for being shot to death by police who don’t seem to have given him a chance.
It enables violence and, depending on who is doing the victim-blaming and what power they have, often threatens violence.
consider this: all an american cop has to say in a situation like this is: “he tried to get my gun,” or maybe “i thought she was going to kill me”, or even “he turned into a demon”, and he/she will not be charged with any crime.
given this i think it’s impossible to know what happened that day. but i do know that cops regularly beat the crap out of people, intimidate people, harass people and kill people. even when they get caught, nothing happens (see the recent story about the poor guy in NY who died after being placed in a chokehold). sorry to say i have a hard time believing any cop who claims that the citizen was going for their weapon, though undoubtedly sometimes it is true.
yes: people do dumb things. yes, they provoke cops. but the punishment should never be summary execution.
