Isn't politics / ethics inherently inflammatory?
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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There's a difference between asking "Canadian liberals, why do you oppose such and such law?" and "Canadian libtards, why do you always do dumb stuff like opposing such and such?"
Sure, but the subject is the same; it's still posting about 'such and such', and the rule here is about subject, not framing.
If I need to put a content warning on a topic that could be inflammatory if someone appended 'you stupid fuck' to the end of it, then I need to put a content warning on everything, rendering it useless.
I respect the intent behind this, but I've been round internet (and pre-internet) discussion forums since the 80s, and this approach just muddies the water.
Fair enough.
To be fair, when someone seasons their arguments with invective like you stupid fuck, to me, it reduces their credibility as a party interested in learning or arguing in good faith.
There are consequences to conversing online like a typical COD gamer.
I'm not sure how that's relevant here.
There's a ton of highly-polarizing, hot-button political issues out there at the moment - trans rights, climate change, the republican party, et cetera et cetera.
Presenting those issues in a blunt or confrontational manner is virtually guaranteed to generate strong feelings; starting a fight over them would be trivially easy.
By any reasonable metric, you'd have to call those topics inflammatory. But is it useful or appropriate to ban discussion of them from the platform on that basis?
I hold that it is not. They are inflammatory because they are important, because people need to be talking about them and taking a position, because people should be trying to convince others to be on the right side of history.
If people have to self-censor just in case things could potentially get heated, because god forbid anyone care enough to raise their voice, all you're left with is celebrity gossip and fashion news - and that's exactly the kind of bland advertiser-friendly pap I thought we were trying to avoid.
Quite frankly if you aren't getting angry about important things, you're doing it wrong - and imho it just smacks of entitlement to play tone-police and refusing to hear a message because the phrasing isn't polite or the person saying it won't stay in their designated lane.
I'm not asking people to stay in their lane, which is about disregarding their opinion based on their own circumstances. But I think its possible to argue an opinion without adding ad hominem attacks (e.g. well, you're just an idiot ) or poisoning the well ( Anyone who disagrees with me is insincere about their convictions )
I assume you don't mean to imply the internet population on average is incapaalble of discussing serious matters without popping off like the Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight. Granted I have a background in tech support but that should not be a step up from the average regarding basic civility.
First point:
- High-stakes, polarising issues by their very nature raise strong feeliings, making them 'inflammatory subjects' by definition.
- However, censoring discussion of these issues would lead to a bland, feckless environment where activism and even the discussion of social justice issues is hidden, and the status quo is tacictly endorsed. Which, when the right of marginalised groups is on the line, is horrible injustice by default.
- Censoring discussion of certain issues because other people might potentially yell about them is even worse. If I go into /c/chess and start yelling in everyone's threads, would that make chess an 'inflammatory subject' that people should avoid talking about?
Second point:
- The tone argument is routinely abused by privileged groups.
- It's easy to have smug, civil, all-friends-here armchair debates on a purely intellectual level, when it's not your life and the welfare of your children that's being actively threatened by the outcome.
- As such, this forms the basis of a highly disingenuous tactic: Calmly discuss the merits of some hideous proposal, then when you get a lot of angry responses from the people affected by it, point out that it just proves your point: these subhuman oafs aren't even capable of rational or courteous discussion!
- (the above is exaggerated for effect, but not a whole lot - see chapter 5 of The Witch trials of J. K. Rowling (though the entire video is fascinating and you should watch it).
- I too am a sysadmin. Fuck the tone argument, alexa play 70s punk rock.
I'm one of the crazy, disaster-queer anarchist pinko commies defending the marginalized, and its usually the outraged privileged losing their shit and showing poor tone, in my experience. This might reflect more consistent value on the other side of loyalty before principle such as when they accuse us of snowflakery while at the same time taking offense when common behavior subjects them to ridicule.
You and I are on the same side, I think. And yes, while I can't fault someone for losing their cool when someone is suggesting they should be persecuted / annihilated / forced to follow a silly religious faith, I've found I reach more hearts and minds keeping my language civil, especially in the face of boisterous bigotry.
But then, I've also studied a bit, so my opinions and methods might be on more solid ground than most.
I'm with Natalie on this one (seriously, watch that video, all her stuff is excellent): there's merit in winning hearts and minds, and there's definitely a place for it - but you can't deradicalize all the bigots, and you don't need to. As per her example, there are still homophobes aplenty, yet gay rights have come an enormously long way in the last few decades despite their best efforts.
Solidarity and setting a baseline are just as important, and sometimes moreso. Punching nazis may not convince them, but it does empower others and give them some backup, and the Overton window can slide a bit from the impact. The right expletive in the wrong place can make all the dif ference in the world. You hold the line, and you be seen to hold it.
Not all sealions need feeding, not every argument should be dignfied with a response on its own terms, and emotion should not be disparaged in ethical discourse.
Ethics is just a system to predict outrage, and outrage is an emotional response to (plausibly generalised) threat perception. Lose the emotion, and you're left with an empty, inauthentic shell. And that's precisely what the bad actors want: they want an abstract parlour game they can disqualify you from, while they remain comfortably insulated from the stakes.
Fuck that, fuck them. I'm a 'drag the dead kids into the room where everyone has to look at them' kind of guy; I get tutted at on a regular basis from people who are offended by this, and honestly I'm good with that, because I get results anyway, in my line of activism.
But then, I've also studied a bit, so my opinions and methods might be on more solid ground than most.
That comes across as hugely condescending; I'm likely misinterpreting, but I'm not clear as to how.
I have watched it. And Sean's take, and Jessie Gender's. I followed the wizard game boycott as well as Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull's tour and debacle in Australia and New Zealand.
Normally I don't engage with those in the movement at all, (whether we're talking about the anti-trans movement in the US and UK or the white Christian nationalist movement and fascist takeover of the US federal and state governments). I am used to being confronted by them in response to a comment to a third party. And when hate or allegiance to the movement reveals itself, I feel obligated to confront it. Hate movements thrive when left unchecked to fester and grow.
That said, it wasn't my intention to brag, more I was pondering if my studies (of the Holocaust, for instance) have dulled its visceral effects on me so I may be expecting a degree of impartiality that isn't normal for most. I've predicted and grieved over the fascist uprising in the US back in the aughts, so today I see it as a near inevitability. We will have to be very lucky for the US to evade autocratic fascism during the next decade.
But it wasn't my intent to offend, and I get it if you want to assume I'm as incorrigible as much of the internet. My own disposition is neither cheery nor sociable.
No, in principle it's possible to discuss them like civilized people. People usually don't on the internet, but it's not a logical impossibility or anything. "Karma" and political astroturfing don't really lend themselves to that, though, so on Reddit they usually were. This is supposed to be a chance to do it right, I think, along with a few other things.
Everytime I hear about the trolley problem I am triggered.
The trolley problem is misused a lot. Outside a moral philosophy classroom and making trolley-problem jokes, there are better examples of paradoxes to dontological suppositions.
From what I've seen so far, it's just a broad rule they can point to if they want to remove certain content.
Essentially it's their house and we're just renting a room.
Sure, but the best ruleset I've ever seen actually work is "don't make us ban you". Everyone knows where they stand with that one.
Having blanket 'rules' that are enforced at-will under the pretense that they're actual rules, like anti-loitering laws... tend to get used less-transparently and more disingenously.
What I would like to see is fewer downer questions that drowned reddit and made me unsubscribe. I've already started to see them here.
Like "What song makes you sad?" "What screams 'I'm lonely'?" or "What is the dumbest, most infuriating thing you've heard your coworker say?"
Every single one of your examples sounds like askreddit/asklemmy. Just block that community if you want to avoid them.
Which is a pity, because AskReddit used to have interesting questions a few years ago.
Test
I don't agree about 1 and 4. Let the people speak by using their down and upvotes. That's the power behind a platform like this. That's how Reddit got big.
If you're going to be overly strict people will post and comment less and some might even fully avoid Lemmy.
Of course things like gore and NSFW pics and vids should be behind a content warning. But other things?
I've blocked communities I absolutely don't want to see and interact with. For everything else: down and upvotes.
On the other hand, what's the harm of a content warning? If you feel like you're okay clicking on something you've been warned about, you're not any worse off.
Number 4 also seems like basic etiquette to me. You can't always downvote and move on if someone decides to be a dick and hits home. Why blame the victim and not the perpetrator? There's no reason to be uncivil to begin with.
Content warnings can be a bad thing. It's the very first thing that's in most posts, and so it forces you to read it. Otherwise someone can just skip by because the the actual discussion of the topic is deep without a paragraph, and usually doesn't come out of nowhere
Content warnings can be a bad thing.
In what way could a content warning ever be bad?
HEY THIS IS ABOUT RAPE
Is jarring. The warning itself is the triggering thing. https://theconversation.com/proceed-with-caution-the-trouble-with-trigger-warnings-192598
The only content warning on Lemmy is the NFSW tag tho. That's what they were talking about.
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