I’m not talking about you, we’re talking about the gamergate stuff that targeted women and drove them from their homes - was that you or not? They are not some kooky aberrations, they are indeed unhinged assholes.
And we all have issues to work through, it’s called being human.
Wait, What?
You jumped into this convo to pounce on everybody’s favorite gwwar with insults like “trolley” “ignorant” and “weak.” You forfeited the claim to the high road.
You know what it looks like when boys push out girls? Tired, cliched, sexist “jokes” like this.
To be quite clear, I was the one talking about generalities to @anon61221983. I do apologize if I offended you. I do not think you need professional help as I do not know you, nor have you to my knowledge sent out any death threats in response to silly internet opinions on gaming.
But in truth, if you do believe that high school is a truly terrible experience for teenagers all around the world, shouldn’t we be working to make that better as adults for our own kids?
And that is quite enough of me trying to participate in this thread. Good day.
Modern communication means we’re all being confronted with the uncomfortable fact that cliquishness, bias, and “Highschool bullshit” is everywhere, all the time, for our entire lives. Hiring and promotion in the business world, career selection, legal sentencing. It’s not new toxic culture, it’s the human condition out in the light of day.
We’re social creatures, it’s tribalism and xenophobia that is most likely baked into our DNA. It’s stereotyping (in the neutral sense) as a tool of schema building and pattern recognition to reduce cognitive load so we can function in a large society. It’s the product of not distinguishing empathy from compassion. It’s the underlying mechanism of Privilege. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging it, and a lot wrong with failing to.
Wait… are you the dog or the guy in the water? Please explain this gif-naology!
Ironically, it was on boingboing that I actually found out about the people who are mocking and exposing the silliness of most social justice warriors: Andrea James on article on how SJWs were attacking the “wrong people” like RuPaul introduced me to tumblrinaction and its been a wild ride!
Reread @gwwar comment and tell me it wasn’t weak – it was the equivalent of “all movies are crap”. It was a circlejerk comment and I called it out for what it was.
Also, that tweet is not a joke - my wife is exactly like that. She’s impossible to debate because she’ll keep switching from generality to (often irrelevant) details. That’s how she is. Calling her out on it, like I do all the time – is that sexist? Did I say all wives are like that? All women? No, I said my wife (who could as well be, in 2014 UK, a man, for all you know) is like that, which she is.
But hey, thanks for the example of cyberstalking, what a shining example of well-rounded grown-up you must be – I bet you decry the same practice when “trolls” do it. Note how I sign everything with a handle I’ve hold for decades, with my real name attached, and I even put my face on it rather than some Hollywood actor, unlike someone else here.
There are some great examples of high-road gatekeepers all around boingboing these days.
The problem with discourse like this is that it changes absolutely nothing. It pisses people off on both sides of the issue, but it doesn’t change anyone’s minds. The people who already agree are made even angrier, and the people who don’t agree move even deeper into their self-important opinions. Self-righteous indignation is about the quickest way possible to turn a discussion into an argument. Believe me, I do it way too often, and always scold myself afterwards. Self-righteous indignation has never changed someone’s mind about an issue, but it most certainly has galvanized opinions against the self-righteous proclamation.
Clear, cold logic works well. So does playing to our common humanity (we’re all humans, even if some of us have shitty worldviews… don’t forget that, eh?). This is Bill Maher level bullshit. Let me tell you, Bill Maher has never changed a mind in his entire life; neither has Michael Moore, or Bill O’Reilly for that matter. They merely galvanize the opposing sides against each other.
I am a huge proponent of equal rights under the law for all people, regardless of gender, race, age, or any other factor. But what are you trying to accomplish with pieces like this? That is a serious question. Do you really hope to accomplish anything at all, besides making people angry? Surely you don’t think this will actually change anyone’s mind about the issues at hand. Do you even care? Are you trying to change people’s minds, or have you given up already? It’s easy to give up and give into our own personal ideologies; that’s what the folks on the other side of this topic have done. Unfortunately, it seems that you’ve dropped to their level and given up as well.
Unfortunately, no, it doesn’t always work. I wish it did.
Part of the problem with intellectual discussion in this country is that 90% of it is self-righteous indignation. We can’t talk about this stuff without getting pissed off and beating our opinions over the heads of our opponents. I, personally, vowed long ago to find another route to help foster cultural change, which is appealing to those aspects of ourselves that we share in common. We all have a commonality, but you wouldn’t expect that to be the case with vitriol like this. This shouldn’t be called a “battle” or a “war”; you’ve merely created another dichotomy. If you know anything about intellectual discourse, dichotomies are bad. They polarize people, and they destroy discussions, ultimately preventing change.
We’re all in this together. The only way change will happen is if we try to work together and try to enlighten the ignorant amongst us. Why beat them over the head when you know that it will only make them listen even less? You must appeal to them on some level in order for them to listen to you; otherwise, what’s the fucking point?
While I agree with this to some extent:
You sometimes can’t work with people who don’t see it as us all being in this together. At what point do we say it’s okay to be extreme?
You’re right, it doesn’t always work. But it’s preferable to further polarization of opinion.
This has bothered me about discussion in America since I first realized my own intellectual capabilities. We cannot discuss religion, politics, identity, or culture in this country without people turning on each other and tearing it all to pieces. Why is that? Are there just too many ignorant people in this country that don’t have the capacity to think rationally and take their ideas to their logical conclusions?
No, it’s not that. It’s because we in America define ourselves almost entirely by our ideas. We’re all ideologues, but we don’t even realize it. What then happens is that when someone challenges someone else’s ideas, that person thinks that they are challenging the actual essence of the person. The person then becomes defensive, in the same sort of way that they might had you insulted their mother, or their favorite sports team, or something else that is important to them on a very personal, possibly irrational, level.
So, what’s the answer? What’s the best way to reach people? I haven’t entirely figured that out yet. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure it out, and I’ve gotten much closer than I was in the past. But I do know what doesn’t work.
Already, two cents said and done. Take it if you will, it doesn’t matter much to me. I’ll continue to treat and respect everyone equally, and do my best to continue to fight against ignorance and oppression in all of its forms.
That is an excellent question. I always go back to Albert Camus for my answers in that regard. I discuss this with my mom regularly (she’s very much into black culture and fighting against institutional racism and oppression).
It is a really tough issue. I certainly don’t mean to attack the author at all, I’ve just been searching for a long time to try to find a middle, moderate path for discourse in this country as we continue to become further polarized.
That’s great. I hope you do and that we all do. But not everyone is playing by our rules and way too many of those people are the ones with the bully pulpits and with their fingers on the trigger. The solution to that is… I don’t know, honestly.
I just wanted to say how much I think the word gif-nalogy is great and that I’ll endeavor to use it myself from now on.
Cheers!
I agree : / I hope we’re just in the middle of a conservative backlash in this country, and that in a decade or so we’ll look back at the Tea Party, and the proud misogynists, and the bullshit racists policies in this country and think “damn, was it really that bad?”.
That’s my hope anyway. We’re all just Sisyphus in the end. Keep up the good fight, I shouldn’t be coming here and hampering the arguments of those with whom I ultimately agree : )
Well, I think that it’s the right that has pushed this country so far to the right that the moderate left is now called extreme. I think maybe Malcolm’s argument about living in an age of extremes is still relevant. As Zinn once said, you can’t be neutral on a moving train. The middle ground is nice, but I’m not sure how useful it is for bringing about real social change, when the middle is now the right…
Yeah, can’t argue with that : P
Part of the issue is that the common person is not as ideological as the political parties are right now. The Republican Party used to be full of moderates (there was an excellent study done on this recently, though I can’t recall the source right now), but Bill Clinton was too moderate for their likes, so he pushed them even further right, which spawned the neo-cons. Something very similar happened in the late 40s and early 50s with the rise of Joe McCarthy. I see a lot of parallels between what happened after Truman defeated Dewey in '46, and what’s happened since the late '90s. The average person is fairly moderate (as long as they’re not hiding behind the anonymity of the internet, which is a huge can of worms I don’t have time to get into now), but they don’t realize it because they’ve been fed all of this crap from whatever source of information they’ve used to construct their non-reflective ideology.
I can sum up the problems in this country pretty succinctly: populism, fascism, and fear.
funruly, I have to admit that I found the reposting of the tweet pretty sketchy. The tweet is obnoxious (publicly disrespecting one’s spouse makes one look like a jerk - and no, “it’s the truth” doesn’t make it less jerk-like), but reposting the tweet does come across as stalkerish, even if it’s in service to your argument.
I’m glad to see someone talking about how this polarization and false dichotomy doesn’t do anything to change people’s minds, and I wanted to point you towards something you might find interesting: “Can Rational Arguments Change People’s Minds?”
Basically, the point is that many things we try in arguments don’t work as well as we think they should because the arguments that galvanize a person’s standing opinions are different from the ones that change minds, and when we believe something enough to try to convince people, we primarily remember the galvanizing arguments, and so those are the ones we gravitate towards.
You can’t change people’s minds with stats, because people can always find stats to support their opinions so people don’t trust them. You can’t change people’s minds by insulting them. You can’t change people’s minds by strawmanning their arguments. But all too often, those are the tactics we gravitate towards.
According to that post the best way to convince someone is to listen to someone, make them explain their position, and to describe things as steps of a process, rather than stating them as facts.
