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Dr_Noface
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Post by Dr_Noface » Fri Feb 14, 2020 5:07 pm

I feel the Chapo discourse is reasonably entertaining and no cruder than that of this forum. Don't let pearl clutching twitter users scare you off without checking out at least some of their signature episodes. As they're closing in on 400, might as well start with the most popular (or the ones with the best guests).
My introduction to the series were episodes 133, Antifap (a response to Charlottesville) and 142, The Schlock Doctrine. (interview with Naomi Klein of The Shock Doctrine Fame).
Some of my favourites are the Matt-only history episodes. Search for "The Inebriated Past" in the subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackWolfFeed/ to download the episodes for free.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Fri Feb 14, 2020 5:23 pm

I legit don't care how crude the Chapo people are on their podcast. The "dirtbag left" are vile thugs who harass people online. I hate Virgil Texas as a person because he is a terrible human being. It's genuinely not important to me how good or bad he is at his actual job.
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Pseudo Stupidity
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Post by Pseudo Stupidity » Fri Feb 14, 2020 5:46 pm

The Chapo podcast is very crude, but also pretty funny most of the time (probably at their best when doing a reading series, like Ben Shapiro's novel). Their targets virtually all deserve it and, much like seeing Kaelik's breakdowns of the election, it makes you feel more sane to see that there's a ton of people who are seeing what's going on and having very similar reactions to it. There's a lot of bullshit, and it's nice to see other people are also mad and you're not just fucking crazy. People should be very angry about what happened in Iowa!
I don't give much of a shit about Twitter, but the tweet seems fucked up but is maybe less fucked up when you add context? And I mean, Frank thinks making fun of shitty group dances is homophobic, so maybe he's got a bit of a hair trigger on that.
Last edited by Pseudo Stupidity on Fri Feb 14, 2020 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

> sandmann wrote:

> > Zak S wrote:I'm not a dick, I'm really nice.

> > Zak S wrote:(...) once you have decided that you will spend any part of your life trolling on the internet, you forfeit all rights as a human.If you should get hit by a car--no-one should help you. If you vote on anything--your vote should be thrown away.
> > If you wanted to participate in a conversation, you've lost that right. You are a non-human now. You are over and cancelled. No concern of yours can ever matter to any member of the human race ever again.

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Dr_Noface
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Post by Dr_Noface » Fri Feb 14, 2020 5:50 pm

I hear about "harassment" a lot, but I must admit that most of those claims come off as a bit hyperbolic to me, especially when coming from corporate media "blue checkmarks".
Last edited by Dr_Noface on Fri Feb 14, 2020 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Fri Feb 14, 2020 6:16 pm

> Dr_Noface wrote:I hear about "harassment" a lot, but I must admit that most of those claims come off as a bit hyperbolic to me, especially when coming from corporate media "blue checkmarks".

Having seen actual screenshots, they aren't hyperbolic. At all. It's genuinely disgusting.
The degree of harassment that gets directed towards any content provider who happens to be a woman, a person of color, or gender non-conforming is hair raisingly terrifying. And yes, most of that comes from the "alt right" fuckers like Gamer Gators and Milophiles. But some of it comes from the left as well. And the part of the left it comes from is the "dirtbag left."
That term "dirtbag left" is literally actually from Chapo. That's patient zero of the left's portion of the online harassment problem. There's a part of rose twitter that is basically just sitting around thinking up reasons to spam the inboxes of women with hateful misogynistic comments, and it's coming from inside the house. The Chapo Trap House.
Fuck. Those. Guys.
It's tempting to think we're on the same side because they keep telling us that we are. But we're not. They aren't trying to build a better tomorrow. They are just looking for excuses to goatse people and spam their inboxes with fifty copies of "kill yourself." They claim the mantle of leftist only so that they can sleep at night after their hideous actions.
The dirtbag left are just horseshoe theory made real by being exactly the same as the alt right but pretending that it's OK to hate all the exact same people because they happen to support universal healthcare in theory. Think of the moral depravity of The Adventurer's Almanac, for example. He claims that he bombarded me with insults calling me a neo-liberal sellout because he's anti-war, but as soon as we started talking about actual war actions of the actual Republican party suddenly that didn't matter either. These people are literally Trumpists, some of them are still pretending to not be, but it's just fucking concern trolling. Fuck. Those. Guys.
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Last edited by Username17 on Fri Feb 14, 2020 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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The Adventurer's Almanac
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Post by The Adventurer's Almanac » Fri Feb 14, 2020 6:17 pm

Oh god, not Twitter harassment! Anything but that!
Oh, snap, I'm morally depraved, too! Fucking awesome.
Last edited by The Adventurer's Almanac on Fri Feb 14, 2020 6:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Fri Feb 14, 2020 6:37 pm

Since for some god forsaken reason this is now the thread where twitter harassment is discussed here is the reality:
1) Media figures are used to never being criticized ever at all, and twitter is now a place where any random person can criticize them and they kind of have to see it, so lots of media take extremely normal criticism and declare they are being harassed and post screencaps of it, and it's really funny that they consider it harassment.
2) Women and black people, and black women especially are very often actually harassed on twitter for the same reason, anyone can attack them, so some people do. While TECHNICALLY the statement "some who do this are on the alt right and some are the dirtbag left" it is also true that "some" are a bunch of fucking centrist shithead liberals too. Black women Sanders supporters get more than their share of harassment, attacks, and death threats mostly from centrists for the same reason that liberals get it mostly from not liberals, most people aren't big on attacking their perceived allies.
3) Sanders supporters are disproportionately women, black, and young, so Sanders supporters (who are black and/or women) receive tons of harassment and Sanders supporters who are young (usually white, usually male) and harass people probably slightly outnumber centrists who meet those same categories. But the media, who are all a bunch of extremely centrist liberals who talk about how the left are going to execute them in Times Square are the ones who get to decide which of those two groups becomes a story.
4) The fact that there are a bunch of extremely influential people with big platforms saying every day that Sanders supporters are the worst (because they don't see any other kind of harassment) leads people who should know better to believe those are the only people doing this or that they are somehow extreme and worse than comparable groups of other political persuasions. Also plenty of people just run with it because even if they don't believe it is is politically expedient.
5) While it is of course, very difficult to discern who's supporters are "more toxic" for all the reasons listed above, what little attempts there have been to quantify have come down not just on Sanders supporters being not more toxic, but in fact, less toxic than other groups.
http://onlineharassmentdata.org/2016ele ... index.html

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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The Adventurer's Almanac
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Post by The Adventurer's Almanac » Fri Feb 14, 2020 8:10 pm

> Kaelik wrote:5) While it is of course, very difficult to discern who's supporters are "more toxic" for all the reasons listed above, what little attempts there have been to quantify have come down not just on Sanders supporters being not more toxic, but in fact, less toxic than other groups.
> http://onlineharassmentdata.org/2016ele ... index.html

I forget, does Bernie pay people to astroturf online like Hillary did with Correct the Record?
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Mask_De_H
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Post by Mask_De_H » Sat Feb 15, 2020 3:45 am

Maybe my brain is broken, but I didn't read that image as homophobic or even homoerotic until I GIS'ed it and found it was from 120 Days of Sodom.
But shit, the Den's defining meme (outside of the Tomes) is the homophobic as fuck "suck a barrel of cocks". We are/were lefty dirtbags who say mean things about elfgames and the people who defended them. If we're going to excoriate other people for being lefty dicks, shouldn't we also excoriate ourselves?
Last edited by Mask_De_H on Sat Feb 15, 2020 3:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

> FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.

> K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.

> Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.

> Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Feb 15, 2020 9:17 am

> Mask_De_H wrote:Maybe my brain is broken, but I didn't read that image as homophobic or even homoerotic until I GIS'ed it and found it was from 120 Days of Sodom.
> But shit, the Den's defining meme (outside of the Tomes) is the homophobic as fuck "suck a barrel of cocks". We are/were lefty dirtbags who say mean things about elfgames and the people who defended them. If we're going to excoriate other people for being lefty dicks, shouldn't we also excoriate ourselves?

We are in fact leftist assholes.
I am Frank Trollman, I am literally a communist, and I say rude things to and about people on the internet. When I am saying "No bro, that's over the line." then maybe you should think about how far over the line someone has gone.
Virigl Texas' grossout pic displays as homophobic very obviously. The explanation that it's actually from a movie with 'Sodom' in the name still sounds homophobic. And the further explanation that the movie is a two hour chunk of shock art about Italian fascists raping and torturing teenage boys still sounds homophobic. Everything about that post is homophobic, and the claim that actually really it's about the ethics in game journalism is laughable on its face but also incredibly stupid.
I don't like Mayo Pete that much, but what's the angle even supposed to be? Buttigieg worked in military intelligence in Afghanistan, therefore he's in favor of torture and warcrimes? That's a hard lift, but you know Donald Trump is literally in favor of torture and war crimes and has fired soldiers for following the law while pardoning soldiers convicted of breaking it. Is it supposed to be that Buttigieg is a fascist because of his poor record with regard to keeping the police of South Bend in line? Maybe? That's still an incredible leap of logic, and again the actual opposition are actual fascists who have changed the executive rules to give carte blanche to ICE to act as a literal gestapo, creating internment camps for children.
But of course the original context is a response to someone reporting Sanders supporters going a little bit unhinged in denouncing Mayo Pete at a Sanders rally. So um... what is the take-home supposed to be? "You said some Sanders supporters went a little bit unhinged in denouncing Mayo Pete, so I'm going to prove you right by posting myself going extremely unhinged in my denouncement of Mayo Pete!" What the fuck? If Virgil Texas wanted to refute that statement, there's lots of ways he could have gone; but going way farther over the line than anyone had even implied anyone had gone at the Sanders rally is the literal actual opposite of anything remotely helpful.
There's lots of ways that the primary math can shake out, and while Sanders has probably a less than fifty/fifty chance of getting the nomination he has a better chance than any other single person. Certainly much higher than Mayo Pete's. People like Virgil Texas are a liability to the cause no matter who gets the nomination. They are toxic assholes whose actions are indistinguishable from paid Russian provocateurs. Increasing antipathy between Sanders supporters and homosexuals is the opposite of what anyone should want.
Now I think you bringing up the barrel of cocks thing is totally fair. It's very close to the line, and I don't fault people who say they can't hang out here because they feel it is over the line. If we only said it to homosexuals or only said it to gender non-conforming people or something, it would be over the line. Saying that in a mixed public space without context would be socially unacceptable, and obviously so. There is a non-zero chance that at some point in the future we are going to have to permanently retire the cock barrel if changes in language and culture make that sound too homophobic.
But Virgil Texas didn't post something with a long internet tradition. He made a grotesque and obviously homophobic meme and pointed it at the only gay candidate in the race. There's never a time that would have been OK. And it's not even good tactics. There is a reason that none of the major candidates on the Democratic side have gone after Mayo Pete's sexuality and Rush Limbaugh has. Attacking members of our own coalition for having minority status is obviously bad for the coalition. I shouldn't even have to tell you why.
And remember, I'm not scraping the barrel looking for questionable statements from four years ago. This is just the latest thing Virgil Texas did. He is a garbage person who needs to be deplatformed as hard and fast as possible.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Sat Feb 15, 2020 1:04 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:I don't like Mayo Pete that much, but what's the angle even supposed to be? Buttigieg worked in military intelligence in Afghanistan, therefore he's in favor of torture and warcrimes? That's a hard lift, but you know Donald Trump is literally in favor of torture and war crimes and has fired soldiers for following the law while pardoning soldiers convicted of breaking it. Is it supposed to be that Buttigieg is a fascist because of his poor record with regard to keeping the police of South Bend in line? Maybe? That's still an incredible leap of logic, and again the actual opposition are actual fascists who have changed the executive rules to give carte blanche to ICE to act as a literal gestapo, creating internment camps for children.

"You aren't allowed to criticize people in the primary unless they are worse than Trump" continues to be the dumbest possible take and also not one Frank actually applies to himself.

> FrankTrollman wrote:There is a non-zero chance that at some point in the future we are going to have to permanently retire the cock barrel if changes in language and culture make that sound too homophobic.

While we are at it, people should retire using the R word as a generic insult in 2020. Ideally should have been done a long time ago as obviously a lot of people did.
Last edited by Kaelik on Sat Feb 15, 2020 1:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Shrapnel
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Post by Shrapnel » Sat Feb 15, 2020 3:09 pm

> Kaelik wrote:

> > FrankTrollman wrote:There is a non-zero chance that at some point in the future we are going to have to permanently retire the cock barrel if changes in language and culture make that sound too homophobic.

> While we are at it, people should retire using the R word as a generic insult in 2020. Ideally should have been done a long time ago as obviously a lot of people did.

A thousand times yes.
As someone who has ASD, terms like this are extremely irritating and offensive. You have no idea how many times I've been called a "retard" because I just so happen to have Asperger's. I mean, for fucks sake, we don't use racial or homophobic slurs as generic insults, do we?
Look, there aren't many things that I will get on a soapbox for, but this stigmatizing of people with mental health issues just has to stop; it's discriminatory.
(While we're on it, there's a poster here - I forget who, they have a pig as their avatar, which is fitting - who has a quote from Psychic Robot saying something like "Aspie cannot compute". If you're reading this - you are a garbage human being. Please change your sig to something less offensive.)
Is this wretched demi-bee
Half asleep upon my knee
Some freak from a menagerie?
No! It's Eric, the half a bee
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Feb 15, 2020 4:32 pm

I do try to use the R-word less. But I am conflicted.
I lived through school in the late eighties and early nineties when we tried to use other words for people with special needs. And those became insults too. Because comparing people without special needs to people with them is disparaging almost by definition. For fuck's sake, when I was in 5th grade, people used special as an insult!
From a tactical standpoint, I actually think as a culture we are going to need to have a word that means "developmentally delayed" but in a specifically insulting way that can be used to talk about poorly designed video games or bad dialogue in movies. And then have other words that refer to people who have Cerebral Palsy or whatever but are not inherently insulting or judgmental. That's obviously really difficult, and I don't know what words should be assigned to each category or if we need to make new words.
What words can be reclaimed, what words can be pushed out of acceptable speech, and what words just chug along being mild curse words is super complicated. There is a reason we speak of African Americans as "black" and not "negro" and definitely not the other N-word that this site actually blocks. And it wasn't always thus. There have been similar linguistic fights about "gay" and "queer." The terminology for gender-non-conforming people evolves quickly and there are multiple valid groups (and multiple invalid groups) arguing for different language use and right now the only truly respectful thing to do is ask "What would you like to be called?" Maybe some day it will settle, but by that time the language may yet be moving on again.
But I do think that it may be actually impossible to get people to not refer to contradictory legislation or badly engineered consumer devices with the R-word. We might have to cordon that off as acceptable use. But in any case, that doesn't mean we have to be OK with people using "Aspie" or "Spastic" as an insult, that shit's just obviously not OK.
In any case: my wife and I saw Birds of Prey on Valentines Day. It's a good Valentines Day movie in the same sense as Deadpool was a good Valentines Day movie. I liked it a lot, although I will easily concede that Deadpool is a better film. It's more along the lines of Deadpool 2 in terms of quality. Totally worth watching.
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:07 pm

> Mask_De_H wrote:Maybe my brain is broken, but I didn't read that image as homophobic or even homoerotic until I GIS'ed it and found it was from 120 Days of Sodom.
> But shit, the Den's defining meme (outside of the Tomes) is the homophobic as fuck "suck a barrel of cocks". We are/were lefty dirtbags who say mean things about elfgames and the people who defended them. If we're going to excoriate other people for being lefty dicks, shouldn't we also excoriate ourselves?

It's difficult to say how homophobic the ol' barrel of cocks is. Sexually vulgar words and expressions have a tendency to become insults regardless of their genderedness or even how little sense they make. If I think you are being inappropriately rude and don't want to talk to you anymore, then I'm going to tell you you're a penis having intercourse and you should go urinate. Excuse me, let me try that again - I'm going to tell you you're a fucking dick and you should piss off. That's a gendered insult, but I've never heard anyone tell me it's misandric, and if I heard someone tell me they thought it was misandric I would think they were an alt-right concern troll doing a "but what about sexism against men?" routine.
[EDITED] (that's the c-word for a lady's naughty bits, since the censor eats it) is an intensely controversial word in the U.S., but it appears to have followed a similar etymological path towards becoming an insult as dick (i.e. not rooted in any sort of archaic gender politics), and is probably only as controversial as it is because the 1970's feminist movement's effort to purge female-gendered insults just happened to half-stick over here in the States and not so much anywhere else. The fact that that initiative happened and succeeded is enough to make me uncomfortable using the c-word, and cause me to make very bad assumptions about other Americans I do hear using it, but I also understand not to apply that standard to other parts of the English-speaking world anymore than I would accuse an American saying "dick" of misandry. The absence of "eat a [EDITED]" in our lexicon as some kind of parallel phrase is also somewhat unsettling, but on the flipside the aforementioned initiative to move language away from female-gendered insults means... we should expect to see less female-gendered insults. As an American, it's really only socially acceptable for me to use vulgur words for male genitalia. Maybe if I spent more time hanging out with some of Queen Elizabeth's more creatively disrespectful subjects, I'd have more thoughts to offer on the proliferation of [EDITED]-based insults, but as is fuck if I know. Meanwhile bitch actually does seem to have etymological roots in condescending to women, and yet it's about a hundred times more socially acceptable to say. It all makes no fucking sense, and you kind of need to understand that it all makes no fucking sense in order to navigate it.
Generally speaking, there seems to be a linguistic pattern in which we borrow the power of breaking taboos to stress our incivility (the insult isn't always in the meaning the words represent - "piss off you fucking prick" is just absolute gibberish when taken literally - the insult is in the willingness to use those words at all, because the words themselves are offensive), and talking about penoos and vajayjays is a taboo, so when we want to be rude to people we say a lot of nonsense about penoos and vajayjays. Then somewhere along the line we had a "wait, is this sexist moment?", decided that yes, yes it was, but we did so in an incredibly arbitrary and inconsistent way, and now if you use certain words in certain parts of the world the people who hear you say those words will think you're sexist, but other words are still fair game because reasons. So, is borrowing the naughty words we use to describe performing oral sex on men in order to stress our incivility etymologically rooted in sexism/homophobia? Who the fuck knows - but in the end your audience is going to be the one judging your statements, and if they think it's sexist/homophobic and you don't want to be perceived as sexist/homophobic then you won't say it. This is why I am completely comfortable telling someone they're being a dick and very uncomfortable telling someone they're being a [EDITED]. Those are equally gendered insults with functionally identical meanings in this context and identical etymological histories that lead to them becoming insults, but we made one way more offensive than the other so I don't want to use it anymore.
We - collectively - are making this shit up as we go, and if the collective we makes some questionably arbitrary decisions you kind of just have to go along with them because that's how taboos work.
On the other hand, using violent homerotic imagery to attack the one homosexual candidate in the primary is blatantly homophobic in the sense that the thought process was very obviously, "Buttigieg is a gay evil capitalist, here's a scene with evil gay capitalists being gratuitously gay and evil. What do you mean this is homophobic? I only care about the evil capitalist part." No, you don't only care about the evil capitalist part, because exactly zero people's minds, when offered the prompt evil capitalists, go straight to obscure 1975 Italian films. Virgil Texas's train of thought chose that particular track because Buttigieg is gay, that was the extra link necessary to make it relevant, and anyone who's being even remotely honest about it knows that. That's the reason the "joke" worked when at all when he was telling it to himself in his head, and he ran with it because his internal censor doesn't give a fuck who it offends because he actually is the left-wing equivalent of a 4chan /pol/ troll. If people are angry at him that means he's winning!
No, we're not really in the same category as "Pete Buttigieg molest-mutilates naked young men. Because he's an evil capitalist. Not because he's gay. But he is gay. And that's why they're naked young men, specifically. The joke wouldn't really work if he were straight. Like, at all. But it's still not because he's gay, you understand." We have an arguably problematic phrase that may or may not be rooted in sexist/homophobic notions that giving head to men is a mark of weakness... but could just as easily be rooted in the much less unsettling etymological trend that virtually all sexual vulgarity becomes insulting because reasons. And if the community starts to feel like it's a bit too close to the former for comfort (which seems to be an emerging consensus over the past few years), most of the users who aren't known shitheads will probably just stop using it. Which I suspect is something that already started happening several years ago.
The language of appropriate and inappropriate vulgarity is just really, really weird and convoluted.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Maj » Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:12 pm

"Retarded" was a hard habit for our house to shake. And not for lack of wanting to (Gi is a special needs kid in classes with other special needs kids, so yeah), but for lack of good synonyms that did the same job. And then Derpy Hooves came along and saved us all. I know the term has been around longer than MLPFIM, but it hit a sweet spot for us then because we were all avid fans. Gi intuitively recognized it as meaning annoyingly stupid (and/or potentially dangerous), and so that substitution made the transition really smooth.
The word I'm having issues with now is "crazy" because I'm still struggling with the question: is this actually a problem?
My son makes me laugh. Maybe he'll make you laugh, too.
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Post by DSMatticus » Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:48 pm

We're doing something very different when we borrow the language of disability to insult one another than when we borrow the language of identity to do the same.
"What are you, a [EDITED]?" is the implication that to be homosexual is to be contemptible bundled alongside an accusation of homosexuality. The entire insult is "I think you're a man who likes man... which is a really bad thing." It's completely unjustifiable.
"What are you, blind?" is the implication that... an able-bodied person shouldn't have been able to make the mistake that they just made. That's it, really. It's not an expression of contempt for the blind, but it does evoke the limitations of being blind in order to insult the competence of someone who is not blind and does not possess those limitations. It's an exaggerated comparison between someone who should have been able to do a thing yet failed and someone who literally cannot do that thing. You could swap the insult with "what, were you blindfolded?" without changing the meaning - it would just come off as way more awkward and surreal and nonsensical in practice because seriously what? What are you even talking about? Blindfolded?
If we convinced everyone that homosexuals are deserving of respect and possessed of as much dignity as their heterosexual counterparts, [EDITED] would stop being an insult. I don't mean people would choose to stop saying that word, I mean the word would not be insulting and there would be no reason for anyone to try and express their contempt by using that word. If we convinced everyone that the blind are deserving of respect and possessed of as much dignity as everyone else... mockingly asking if someone were blind would still work as an insult, because that's never what the insult was about. That said, if my friend and I were out for dinner or something and my friend missed something obvious, and I teased "what are you, blind?" ... and then realized a few seconds later there was an actually blind person at the table next to us, my following instincts would be to punch myself in the dick and then crawl up on my asshole, shame in tow, never to be seen again.
The reason not to use the language of identity to insult one another is because there's no way to do so without being a shitbag. The reason not to use the language of disability to insult one another is that there are disabled people minding their own fucking business and didn't want to have their disabilities thrown in their face because they happened to be in the blast radius of whatever bombs you wanted to drop.
So depending on context I try to be careful with words in the disability category - "retarded" specifically has become particularly toxic - but I don't hold myself to the standard of being perfect. I don't expect to ever get to the point that "blind" or "crazy" are unacceptable words, but I also accept that there might be times in my life where I sure as shit ought not say them. I put disability insults in the rape joke category of social offenses. Yes, you can in fact joke about rape without enabling rapists or demeaning victims. It's not automatically toxic. But you can't joke about rape in front of even a handful of strangers without the serious risk that you're about to remind someone of something very unpleasant. And if you don't care about that at all, you're an asshole in a way that rises above "I use swear words in heated internet arguments," which is the only kind of asshole I aspire to be.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Sat Feb 15, 2020 9:05 pm

> Maj wrote:The word I'm having issues with now is "crazy" because I'm still struggling with the question: is this actually a problem?

I have personally set about attempting to cleanse it from my usage. I think the blast radius on almost all of these insults is much farther than they could ever be worth and I try to confine myself to stupid, idiot, and moron for things that are well, stupid, and usually for "crazy" or "insane" or variations there of I either use delusional or most commonly, realize that I don't actually mean crazy or insane, and I really mean either stupid or evil but have fallen into using terms relating to mental illness for those things where they don't fit, and then go on some variation of that.
Ironically, at least idiot and moron were once also words that mean the R word and/or crazy in the relatively distant past, or at least close in meaning since our understanding of these concepts was worse. But I think unlike R word and crazy, they have in fact been completely stripped of the medical/disability assumptions of their more modern counterparts and do in fact mean the exact thing Frank wishes there was a word for.
But precisely because they lack the disability meaning, they come off as much less harsh, and so are harder to use to express contempt in words. But my contempt for something stupid is significant and my contempt for victims of developmental disabilities or mental illness is in fact not very existent at all, so I feel they are more appropriate.
Last edited by Kaelik on Sat Feb 15, 2020 9:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Josh_Kablack
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Post by Josh_Kablack » Sat Feb 15, 2020 9:30 pm

> Kaelik wrote: Ironically, at least idiot and moron were once also words that mean the R word and/or crazy in the relatively distant past, or at least close in meaning since our understanding of these concepts was worse.

If you look through 19th century census reports, you can find official counts of the number of idiots.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Feb 15, 2020 9:33 pm

> Josh_Kablack wrote:

> > Kaelik wrote: Ironically, at least idiot and moron were once also words that mean the R word and/or crazy in the relatively distant past, or at least close in meaning since our understanding of these concepts was worse.

> If you look through 19th century census reports, you can find official counts of the number of idiots.

But idiocy is always under-reported in official statistics.
-Username17
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Whipstitch
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Post by Whipstitch » Sun Feb 16, 2020 4:04 pm

While I hate allowing dictionary definitions and good intentions to fall to the wayside I ultimately do think the best tack is to remember our Wittgenstein and consider that meaning is use. Our intentions may be good but that simply doesn't count for very much if we're saying things that are hard to reasonably interpret as being said in good faith due to other bad actors within our communities using the same language.
For example, remember the tranny of dragons typo? I don't consider myself transphobic and it's tempting to try making a big show of arguing that I laughed at it because it replaced a threatening word with a non-threatening word. But whether that's true or whether I'm just kidding myself and have subconsciously inherited our culture's deep-seated transphobia (distressingly likely!) is ultimately beside the point. That's because I am responsible for the things that come out of my mouth and I can't reasonably expect people to read my mind and assume that I'm laughing at wordplay instead of trying to lazily slander D&D by association with transsexuals. Because there are really are people who mean these things as harsh insults and pretending otherwise makes me the unreasonable one, not other posters. Trying to browbeat them into interpreting everything I say in the best possible light is the linguistic equivalent of Dick Cheney convincing Whittington to apologize for getting shot in the face.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Sun Feb 16, 2020 4:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.
bears fall, everyone dies
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Count Arioch the 28th
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th » Sun Feb 16, 2020 8:19 pm

I'm legitimately learning disabled. If I want to say something or someone's retarded I will do so.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
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Prak
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Post by Prak » Mon Feb 17, 2020 2:36 am

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I'm legitimately learning disabled. If I want to say something or someone's retarded I will do so.

I mean, I suppose that's somewhat fair. I'm pretty damned sure I'm on the autism spectrum, but I personally tell people to knock it the fuck off with the "autistic screeching" meme.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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DrPraetor
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Post by DrPraetor » Mon Feb 17, 2020 4:16 am

I do recommend Color out of Space.
Fair warning, it's my favorite Lovecraft story, and it's quite faithful to the original premise. The family drama, I thought, worked well - it has Nicholas Cage in the role he was born to play: a corny dad driven insane by an alien meteor.
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
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Thaluikhain
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Post by Thaluikhain » Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:30 am

> DrPraetor wrote:I do recommend Color out of Space.

I was going to say that you've used the wrong spelling of "Colour" there, but it turns out you haven't.
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Nebuchadnezzar
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Post by Nebuchadnezzar » Mon Feb 17, 2020 4:36 pm

I'm not sure I can unironically recommend Color out of Space, or at least do so more strongly than, say, Die Farbe. The effects are fine, but most of the characters seem placed not so much for purposes of a development arc but to satsify an end-state that was clearly written first. Also, having seen Mandy, I think Cage should play to his strengths and have a scene of nearly-naked bathroom chugscreaming written into every film.
I do think the director's efforts in Color out of Space merit a little excitement for the adaptation of The Dunwich Horror he's apparently writing.
Last edited by Nebuchadnezzar on Mon Feb 17, 2020 4:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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