The g-word
How We Shun Now:
A public post about the naked Trump statue and whether it’s a good idea or not drew some comments.
There’s been an argument raging for years about what level of verbal anger or aggression or hostility or contempt is acceptable in internet discussions. There’s a lot of disagreement.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that calling people garbage is not acceptable. Calling people garbage over and over and over and over again is really not acceptable.
Again with the association between “disagreeing with” and KILLING PEOPLE.
It doesn’t even matter what the discussion-that-might-have-been was actually about. Suffice to say that one side is Right and will Brook No Disagreement. Express an unauthorized point of view and they have three responses:
1. You are obviously ignorant and need to Educate Yourself. (Links to forums full of like-minded people may be appended.)
2. The chanting of Soundbite du jour.
3. You’re garbage. You will be Shunned.
It’s impossible to argue with that. (I know; I was blocked earlier in that thread for standing up to someone who commanded me to “Stop” using terms like “male bodies,” because such “erase trans people.”)
This sort of thing played a big part in waking me up to what the most popular FTB denizens were all about. Their posts and blogs were absolutely dripping with encoded phrases aimed at dehumanizing those of us who wouldn’t conform to their particular gender narrative. For the sin of asking a question, or meekly asking for more nuance, the response was wildly disproportionate.
Me too.
I am not only disturbed by the dehumanization going on here, but by the number of “likes” these comments garnered.
By the way, the “xenophobia” remark was because Araneida’s word salad comment prompted a request to try again “in English”.
On the other hand, since it *is* an open thread, it gave me a handy list of abusive people to add to my block list.
Then what exactly is Herr Trumpenfuhrer supposed to be? Some people are so inherently terrible that dehumanizing them is the only thing that seems reasonable (though I do recognize that such people are essentially paragons of what it is to be human).
You could have an argument about whether Trump deserves to be dehumanised (I say no). But this is about whether disagreeing with someone else’s interpretation makes YOU “literal garbage”. (To which I say HELL NO!!)
“Literal garbage” I’m willing to concede on…
What’s wrong with “garbage”? I can’t think of any way it could be construed as racist, sexist, ableist, or of furthing the marginalisation or oppression of any group of people. I’m also not aware of any circumstances in which it could be considered a curse word.
So, uh, WTF? It is like more offensive than any of the “seven words you can’t say on television”? What about “asshole”?
/confused
@ ^
Garbage refers to a thing to be disposed of; a worthless disposable thing. Applied to humans it has ugly connotations. (Many atrocities throughout history have been justified by arguing that the victims were worthless and disposable.)
The commenter that Ophelia references wasn’t calling Trump’s statue “garbage” (as opposed to “artwork” or “satire”. They were calling someone with whom they disagreed on the thread “garbage”. It’s dehumanizing. Think of “white trash” for another example.
^ That said, the person Araneida young was insulting was most certainly a smug wanker.
Really, Holms? I read that thread. What, exactly, is smug about the comments that elicited such a disproportionate response from someone who wasn’t even part of the original discussion?
Okay, so one person was terrible. Can one person shun? I wish that were true. I would shun all of Christianity and all religion. Feel my shun! My singular shun! My super-strong singular shuntastic abilities!
Much ado about nothing.
One person on the Internet was mean to me! is what this boils down to.
Good gourd, if you actually had to be a minority and be called “garbage” every day of your life? Not online but to your face? Would you wilt? Signs point to “probably”.
Jennifer Chavez, I would like to know what this means “their particular gender narrative,” I would also like to know how you came about this knowledge. Link? It’s so very vague.
“Much ado”? How is it much ado? It’s just a blog post. One quick blog post, that’s all.
No one was mean to me. This isn’t about me.
If I had to be called “garbage” every day of my life? Then I would object to that arrangement, as I object to it when someone else is called “garbage.” What’s your point?
“That said, the person Araneida young was insulting was most certainly a smug wanker.”
I beg your pardon, but how do you know this?
Yes, I second that question, along with tiggerthewing’s.
James Garnett. You have to repeatedly do the ‘view more replies… view more replies’ dance a bit, as fb for some reason only loads bite size passages at a time. His greatest hits can be found in the conversation thread starting with his comment “Also, too: so can people be ambivalent to the Trump statues[…]” and what you will find is an extended series of obvious trolling.
@Silentbob: Huh. I’d not considered that precise perspective before.
Does that mean insults of the form “as useless as X on/in a Y” are similarly abhorrent? (useless = worthless?)
I’m surprised you found his comments trolling, Holms. I accept that you do, but I’m voicing surprise. James Garnett is a friend of mine, and a friend of Ophelia’s. He was also a friend of some of the people on that thread, at one point.
Is it possible that the framing of this situation might have made it easier for you to see this as “trolling”? I’m honestly surprised and disappointed. I know for a fact James wasn’t trying to troll, because he and I have talked about this thread. He’s talked about it with Ophelia and several other of our mutual friends.
If this is how things are, I despair of any of us talking to each other or having relationships of any sort. Something else is going on, something meta to the words actually written, that makes this possible. One person says she’s convinced someone is trolling, and another person with no animosity toward the first sees it exactly the opposite way.
It also bothers me that there’s an implication that. . oh nevermind. James had it coming anyway, right? That’s the important thing. Not the abuse he was subjected to.
Meanwhile I’m mired in an extremely unpleasant conversation with the person who commented @ 13 – and is claiming to be quite unable to see anything contemptuous in that comment. Oy.
@Holms
What!? No, he isn’t.
!?
What makes you think so?
Mind, I was blocked very early on by the person whose thread this is, so I can’t see the whole exchange. But I feel safe in saying that James, who is a friend and a thoughtful person, wasn’t “trolling.”
(Ophelia, if it would help to post the earlier exchanges, I don’t mind being outed. I use the “Lady Mondegreen” nym because I like it, not because I have to worry about people knowing who I am.)
Holms:
I will out myself here. It should be obvious from my avatar that I’m James.
I was not trolling that thread. I was rude, true. I was annoyed at the horrible way they treated me, so yes, I was rude in response. That does not equate to trolling. I didn’t try to cause strife: I just brought up a troublesome question that they found difficult to answer.
You may disagree, and I respect that. But I honestly was just trying to engage in a reasonable way. That engagement quickly devolved into hate—and not on my part, I would add. If you think me a “smug wanker” as a result of just being human in the face of people relentlessly attacking me on a thread, then okay. I suppose you’re a better person than I am, if you can be safely neutral in the face of such things.
Holms, I have in the past respected your comments a good bit. You’ve now put me on notice that perhaps I should not.
Also, Ophelia, Josh, and Lady Mondegreen are people whom I consider to be close friends. I’ve questioned myself over this interaction, and sought their advice. As they say, we’ve talked about this in private. I don’t think that I’m the ultimate authority on anything; rather, I welcome my friends’ wisdom.
I don’t assume that I was right about this. I think that I tried to represent what I thought was right.
I think ‘as useless as tits on a bull’ for example is not on the same level as what the OP is talking about. The phrase indicates that someone or something is functionally useless or unskilled, but doesn’t (in my view) go to the same length in suggesting that the person / thing is expendable. Insulting but not dehumanising I guess.
____________________________________________
#19 Josh Spokes
I agree with part of what you said: my comment seems to implicitly accept that commentary from Araneida Young was due to the person (in my estimation) being a troll, or at least gives her a pass on that diatribe. On that point, I entirely agree with OB in that even without the dehumanising connotations discussed by others, it turns comment threads and even entire blogs into a goddawful cesspit. When one person does it and is permitted to continue, others either fall silent out of the wearying effect of having to deal with that, leave entirely, or take it up themselves out of anger. And so the conversation at that venue is poisoned.
However, as to the assertion of trolling, I still see no other interpretation and in fact I am slightly mystefied that others don’t see it. The OP over there discusses the Trump statues and includes the text
“Probably the last thing I’ll say on those Trump statues is that in addition to being body-shaming, ageist, and transphobic, they come from the kind of people we don’t want empowered or validated.
These are the same people who thought having homeless people fight each other on film was just peachy entertainment.”
It is clear that ‘they’ refers to ‘those Trump statues,’ giving us:
“Probably the last thing I’ll say on those Trump statues is that […] they come from the kind of people we don’t want empowered or validated. These are the same people who thought having homeless people fight each other on film was just peachy entertainment.”
Clearly, the OP is saying that the Trump statues “come from the same people who thought having homeless people fight each other on film was just peachy entertainment.” However, it was not made explicit that the two were linked by virtue of being made by the same group, and so it seemd a tad incongruous that a discussion of Trump statues mentioned ‘making homeless people fight each other’ was mentioned at all. I was not the only one puzzled by that inclusion, and James says something silimar to what I was thinking at that point:
“James Garnett Also, too: so can people be ambivalent to the Trump statues, without also being “people who think that having homeless people hate each other on film” and “immoral assholes who exploit the most vulnerable among us”?
Fair enough so far; Much like myself, James didn’t know at first that that Indecline group are the same that made those videos that shot to infamy a few years ago, and was making the point that disapproval of [bumfights] doesn’t necessarily translate to disapproval of the Trump statues. It was then pointed out to him (and myself) by Susan Beaver that the OP was linking those things together because he knew that they were made by the same group:
Susan Beaver He’s talking about the artists’ other work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumfights
[wiki text]”
And down that particular conversation thread is what I percieved to be intentional obtuseness regarding the meaning of Steve Olsen’s post. Which prompted Araneida’s toxic diatribe, and in turn OB’s post.
Bloody hell that’s a sprawling comment, I had to post before going ahead with other comments. But reading on, I am not keen to press the argument, especially given that it is a side issue to the matter of the ‘human garbage’ diatribe and this OP. An otherwise reasonable got angry in a conversation, pressing further is just going to add to the aggravation while not serving any purpose.
From that conversation:
This works for me.
Bah, this exercise in weighing in on a conversation that I did not participate in leaves a sour taste. #24 is not very useful and can be considered superseded by #25 and #26.
And the peace treaty is signed.
Good. Amazing what happens when reasonable people are reasonable.
@ ^
Oh, bugger off. I just bought two stones with points, a big flat one, and packet of gravel (not the mention the beard) and now there’ll be no stoning? What a waste.