Everyone’s offended these days

http://eev.ee/blog/2016/02/15/everyones-offended-these-days/

by davidism • 10 years ago

90 103 10 years ago

eev.ee

chrisallick• 10 years ago

Didn't read, but this offends me.

masklinn5• 10 years ago

Didn't read

That's your loss, really.

Kurtz79• 10 years ago

Is it ?

I kind of have a hard time understanding the point the author is trying to make (apart from "Fry is an hypocrite").

It might be the writing, but it seems to me he constantly goes off a tangent.

adam12• 10 years ago

HN gets offended by people who joke.

oldmanjay• 10 years ago

Boring, obvious jokes aren't really contributing much, are they?

mfoy_2• 10 years ago

Ironically, the article mentions you!

People who have so desensitized themselves to everything offensive that they’re offended by mere attempts to be considerate.

bobby_9x• 10 years ago

It's not being offended by 'attempts to be considerate`.

I feel like many of bullied are not getting the therapy they truly need. Instead, they are becoming the bullies through sites like Twitter and big companies, schools, and now even governments are catering to their whims because nobody wants the bad press.

The same feminist group that twitter appointed to ther new free-speech censorship board has said some of the most horrific stuff about men. It’s beyond offensive, yet there are no bannings or accountability.

These groups see direct results and the power they have over individuals.

It really needs to stops or we will have no freedoms left and the mentally ill will be in charge of our lives.

theseatoms4• 10 years ago

Are people actually deeply offended by things they read on the interest? Or are people looking for reasons to be "offended"? Because the latter seems far more often the case.

masklinn5• 10 years ago

Did you actually read the article? Or did you just look at the title and see a "witty quip" opportunity? Because the latter seems far more likely given your comment seems unrelated to the article's content.

theseatoms4• 10 years ago

No, I didn't read it. From a quick skim, the article doesn't look worth reading, given its length. Are we not allowed to discuss the title of submissions, only the body of text?

Shog92• 10 years ago

How would you ever know?

You can judge actions, moderate actions, reward actions... But feelings are harder to identify.

Which was sorta the point of this article, I guess. There's a good chance that everyone is offended... So, what are we gonna do about that? If everyone is offended - and if we stop trying to sort out who has a "right" to be and who doesn't - then these notions that some bad behavior is justified kinda start looking silly: if we're gonna welcome everyone into the proverbial pool, then we can't let anyone get away with abuse, including the system itself.

theseatoms4• 10 years ago

Yes, I agree that other people's feelings are hard to know. (Possibly unknowable.) I just can't recall ever in my life having been offended, so I'm skeptical.

kelukelugames• 10 years ago

Yes, read the HN thread on GitHub.

jimrandomh• 10 years ago

I think this is a property of the way voting/distribution work on some sites, but not others. On Twitter or Tumblr, if you want to reply to something, you have to increase its visibility in the process. So if something is really wrong and everyone wants to correct it, it creates these horrible positive-feedback spirals where mass-outrage explodes out of nothing. This doesn't happen on Hacker News, partly because the churn of top-level posts cuts off discussions before they can go too far off the rails, and partly because there's a downvote button which makes things less visible. So people reading comments see mostly positive examples (things that were upvoted), which influences the culture, which in turn makes the comments they write better.

Which is not to say that there's no outrage here. But it tends to be a better sort of outrage, expressed by providing context and explaining what's wrong and what ought to be done.

cmrx64• 10 years ago

I think you're spot-on. It's interesting to note that 4chan had 'sage' to help counter that effect.

iokanuon• 10 years ago

It still has.

jerf2• 10 years ago

I've made a minor hobby of studying how communities are formed by the technical structure of the community, and what interactions they enable. The control of visibility is actually a subtle art, and a lot of things like Twitter or Facebook start with an initial design that is quite unsubtle that works at first, but scales poorly.

I'm not convinced Twitter is fixable as-is. The most obvious technical solution is to do what Reddit did and make sub-Twitters, but they're not going to do that. But as one big global broadcast platform, it too easily exceeds the ability of the human mind to deal with things when you get even modestly popular, to say nothing of being a celebrity trying to directly participate.

But in reality there's simply no way to be a member of a "community" of that size. Arguably that's one of the places where this essay sort of stalls out... there's no community here to be discussing in the first place. Just a really, really big pile of people, with affiliations too loose to even remotely be a community. If there is "power" here, it's not at all clear to me who has it, and it certainly seems on the evidence that Stephen Fry is actually on the short end of that stick rather than the long one. To the extent that the essay seems to vaguely try to suggest that he did the wrong thing, itself ironic in light of, well, itself, I don't think the case was made.

davidism2• 10 years ago

Even sub-communites don't solve the problem. There are certain subreddits notorious for dogpiling on posts in other subreddits. The article mentions this indirectly by observing that what starts out on one platform can easily migrate across communities, even to communities you're not aware of.

bradleyjg• 10 years ago

I can't say I've made a study of it, but I've certainly thought about it.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on reddit style voting with visible points and reordering. In my observation each of those things are detrimental, at least with respect to community building and maintenance.

hendekagon• 10 years ago

offended by others taking offence

gambiting• 10 years ago

Well, the author's suggestion that everything is fine, trolls can be ignored and Fry is somehow hypocritical with being fed up with trolls and offended people is really something that I cannot agree with. Twitter, by its very own format, encourages the worst in the human behaviour. Those who shout loudest get the most visibility, and it has the very real potential to destroy lives and encourage mob justice which is just the worst. Remember this girl who tweeted a joke that she hope's she doesn't get HIV when going to Africa, and was absolutely DESTROYED by twitter, sent death threats and had her personal information published on the internet? This is what Fry meant when he said that the pond is full of scum.

allenskd• 10 years ago

I agree. I feel like people amplify their emotional reasoning to the extreme with social networks enough to jump into whatever moralistic "shoulds" or anything that can get them behind the "right", sort of like putting your morals on the line in a popularity contest, a hell of a emotional rollercoaster.

People seldom take perspective and context in account. Especially if they all go into the angry mob mentality as you mention which I'm pretty sure we have seen plenty of times.

slantyyz• 10 years ago

> People seldom take perspective and context in account.

Part of the problem is the speed that the Internet affords us. People feel the need/urge to respond to things instantly, which often prevents them from taking a breath to get some perspective or maybe to even do some fact checking.

Goronmon2• 10 years ago

This is actually the opposite of what the post says.

The subtext here is that cretinism is acceptable, but being a target is not. If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door. What kind of reasoning is that, and what kind of society does anyone think it’s going to create?

That is a paragraph from later in the article.

_xhok2• 10 years ago

There's a bit of nuance needed re: the paragraphs near the start. Offended people tend to expect others to cater to them. Stephen doesn't; he's simply explaining why people are wrong: for treating "I'm offended" as something that should be pandered to. That isn't the same.

The author seems to be suggesting that because everyone thinks their behavior is universal and objective, one cannot justifiably make this claim, and that every objective thrust must necessarily have emotional underpinnings. Maybe; but Fry never tries to invalidate others' feelings. Those offended tend to.

hyperpape4• 10 years ago

"Maybe; but Fry never tries to invalidate others' feelings."

"“Will all you sanctimonious fuckers fuck the fuck off Jenny Beavan is a friend and joshing is legitimate."

Really?

_xhok2• 10 years ago

Some guy makes an inside joke to a female friend that in public might to some group be considered sexist. Someone nearby hears him and yells "this guy's sexist" and soon he's swarmed by an angry mob. "Oh for fuck's sake fuck off you sanctimonious fuckers," he says with exasperation. That's not quite "invalidating others' feelings" in the sense we're talking about, is it?

tremon4• 10 years ago

Really. Hurting someone's feelings (oh noes, he used directed cursewords!) is not the same as invalidating feelings.

mfoy_2• 10 years ago

The tsunami analogy was quite eye-opening for me. It puts things into perspective. It's easy to look at an individual drop and say: "this is nothing!"

Anyhow, it's a shame that it looks like only half the comments here are from people who read the article instead of just jumping to conclusions.

CPLX• 10 years ago

Perhaps. On the other hand it's not so easy to avoid a tsunami by simply putting down your phone and going for a nice stroll.

lmm• 10 years ago

"None of our platforms are built to deal with it" is a false equivalence. The same social factors exist on every platform, but somehow you don't get the same outrage-storms on other platforms, only Twitter and Tumblr.

I don't suggest people who find themselves offended quit the Internet. But I do suggest that they, and everyone else, quit Twitter. You'll find you're much happier for it.

crystalmeph• 10 years ago

It probably extends beyond Twitter and Tumblr, but they certainly seem to be the first ones anyone thinks about when you talk about emotional echo chambers.

Given that, your advice does make some sense. If the problem is worse on certain platforms, people should be asking themselves if staying on those platforms is worth the price they pay. Of course this entails a trade-off - this article was right that there are no easy solutions to the problem.

Full disclosure - this is the only active account I have on anything remotely "social," although I do browse some of the other things without logging in, so I'm talking as something like an outside observer with a personal bias against the whole medium, precisely because I find the emotional echo-chamber off-putting and distracting.

davidism2• 10 years ago

There's a mismatch in scale: the number and diversity of members on platforms like Twitter is huge, but the ability to moderate is tiny. It would be interesting to see if a system could detect the dogpile effect, by looking at common phrases, checking if many users messaging one user all follow a common user, etc. and offer some sort of temporary relief until a controversy dies down. On the other hand, that's not actually solving the root of the problem.

VLM• 10 years ago

Egalitarianism is dead, most opinions aren't worth hearing.

Democracy is dead, once shared common culture is destroyed the polis turns into a rampaging destructive mob.

So the people pushing this, not the foot soldiers but the people at the top, whats their angle, their logical next step? My guess is authoritarianism, mass censorship, a return to some kind of monarchy. Or maybe they just like watching the world burn. Or they think 1984/BNW/AF are instruction manuals not dystopias. I suppose for the ruling classes, those books ARE utopias. We seem very comfortable with those folks being the only people with money; perhaps its time for us to give them all our civil rights too.

Divide and conqueror... people pay too much attention to the former and forget the purpose of all the drama is the latter.

krig6• 10 years ago

This is a complete misunderstanding of what that quote from Stephen Fry is saying. Of course people get offended. Everyone get offended all the time! So what? He's doing exactly the right thing: He isn't having fun using Twitter, so he stops using it. He's not claiming that getting offended is somehow beneath him, he's saying that getting offended is no big deal.

It's everyone else who is making a big deal out of him leaving Twitter, which (again) kind of proves his original point. Stephen Fry leaves Twitter. Well, so fucking what.

Joeboy2• 10 years ago

It's kind of legitimate news because he was an early Twitter star and did a lot to popularize it, and now he's decided it's not working out for him anymore. This somewhat interesting angle seems to be getting buried under more clickworthy and dramatic narratives.

krig6• 10 years ago

As an aside, I was stunned to see that "Stephen Fry leaves Twitter" qualifies as national news in Sweden [1]. I don't know how this could get any more ridiculous. Can't wait to get the non-stop 24-hour coverage of Stephen Frys Twitter account: Is he going to start using it again? Will he start posting on Google+? Twitter CEO refuses to comment!

[1] http://www.svt.se/kultur/film/stephen-fry-lamnar-twitter

SerLava• 10 years ago

It's not in the news because of the event... Like they don't track Twitter posts and see some celebrity stops posting and go put it in the news.

It's the commentary about the platform and the people using it. Sure it's not exactly 9/11 but it's not THAT bizarre that someone picked it up.

cconroy5• 10 years ago

I dont know Fry but he isn't handling things as well as Dawkins does it seems. Dawkins has a hilarious video of him reading the most hateful tweets.

You have to be careful. Some of the people who complain about others being offended all the time are the biggest babies.

[Edit] If he is leaving bc it is no fun anymore that is an excellent reason.

wavefunction• 10 years ago

Dawkins and everyone else in the world are certainly entitled to express themselves, but there are also repercussions for that expression. He's said some rather dim-witted stuff about religions in general and some religions in particular and while I will defend to the death his right to say those things, it doesn't reflect all that well on his person imo.

jackcosgrove2• 10 years ago

Why does someone even need to justify to others their decision to leave Twitter? Why do they need to handle it well? Social media sucks more because complete strangers feel they have the right the dissect someone else's behavior from thousands of miles away, and pass judgment upon them for violating rules that the target may not even know exist, more than because some people are "babies" and can't stand the nitpicking.

jdietrich• 10 years ago

Stephen Fry has bipolar disorder. His most recent suicide attempt was in 2012. His decision to leave Twitter is entirely understandable and sensible.

tomp3• 10 years ago

Came here to post this. The author of this post just made the biggest possible strawman:

“Now the pool is stagnant, …frothy with scum.” Fry’s feelings aren’t feelings — they are a universal and objective standard of behavior, which everyone else is violating.

When he says "stagnant, frothy with scum" I don't interpret that as him complaining about his feelings, but rather that the discussion/communication (which, I guess, is the ultimate purpose of any communication medium) has become impossible, precisely because people keep being offended and complaining about their feelings.

Mithaldu2• 10 years ago

You missed what he was saying. He's saying that Fry has feelings. He has an urge to talk about the feelings he has, but simultaneously feels he can't mention they're his feelings. So he rationalizes it into objective facts (which also prevents people from answering usefully).

In short: He says Fry is trying to claim his subjective views as objective facts.

capitalsigma2• 10 years ago

but rather that the discussion/communication

So you mean he's not offended --- rather, the other people violated some universal standard of behavior?

hartpuff2• 10 years ago

It's everyone else who is making a big deal out of him leaving Twitter

When I clicked this link I (genuinely) had to check the date, because Fry has been flouncing from Twitter for years.

And yes, flouncing is the word. Fry could quite easily stop using Twitter if he wanted to. He could just stop using it.

Instead he, not "everyone else", writes a lengthy post about the event on his website, perhaps for anyone who missed his leaving Twitter announcement of 2014, or his 2009 announcement about leaving Twitter.

krig6• 10 years ago

How is writing a lengthy post about your feelings on your website making a big deal about anything? That's what your website is there for. It's a public diary where people who care about what you think can read your thoughts.

That he has quit Twitter before makes it even more of a non-event, if possible.

Vaskivo• 10 years ago

Exactly!

We have a saying in Portugal: "Quem está mal que se mude" that can be roughly translated to "Who doesn't feel well [here] should/can move". It mean that anyone who is unconfortable here isn't obliged to stay here and is free to go anywhere else.

That's what Fry did. He is not happy with/in Twitter, so he went away. His "‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what." remark remains sound.

cconroy5• 10 years ago

Is Fry leaving bc of the PC culture or bc of all the mean things trolls say about him? This may be obvious but I don't know Fry or his circumstances.

akud• 10 years ago

He's leaving because of the pc culture. http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/15/peedinthepool/

cconroy5• 10 years ago

Are you sure it is not just because he is not having fun anymore. Otherwise is skin is too thin.

s_kilk• 10 years ago

The subtext here is that cretinism is acceptable, but being a target is not.
If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door.

Sums it up perfectly.

tomp3• 10 years ago

If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door.

Stephen Fry wasn't "kicking" anyone. On the other hand, people who are offended usually do, they viciously attack others (even get them fired!).

Goronmon2• 10 years ago

Stephen Fry wasn't "kicking" anyone.

I don't think the author was implying that Stephen Fry was the "kicker" in the quote above.

KirinDave• 10 years ago

who cares? It’s just some noise. No one is going to have an existential crisis over it; we’re all surrounded by each other, a network of people whose very presence demonstrates that of course Python doesn’t suck. That person has negligible influence here.
Now, you’re the only Python developer at a Haskell conference. You go to a talk, and one slide makes a joke at Python’s expense. The entire room laughs. Suddenly you feel much smaller, maybe embarrassed, maybe annoyed. It was still only one person making one joke, but that person clearly had more influence here

I'm not sure what the author is trying to accomplish here. Maybe they thought they were "pandering to the audience." But I found this metaphor to be inappropriate, poorly formed, and implicitly draws a comparison between 1st world technical choices and actual harassment.

While we can respect other people's feelings, at some point we have to draw a line and say, "This is something where you may be able to brush it off, since it's basically an arbitrary choice you made that you could unmake at any time." As opposed to the deeply-rooted and often immutable nature of subjects that are axis of discrimination elsewhere, such as someone's race or personal gender identity.

Either this author has so little respect for their audience that they think this metaphor will actually speak to the average and intended reader (in which case, wow... you genuinely think I'm stupid), or they genuinely believe that these sorts of things are in a similar category.

Either way, I get a really bad feeling from it.

xori• 10 years ago

My safe space has bully proof windows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXQkXXBqj_U

glenda2• 10 years ago

It's pretty interesting that the people complaining about people being offended too often are so easily "triggered" by other people being offended.

I've been noticing this a lot lately, even on HN. Someone will mention equality or fairness and there will be a whole slew of people complaining about how people are too sensitive now-a-days. In reality, those complainers are being overly sensitive themselves.

tomp3• 10 years ago

It's pretty interesting that the people complaining about people being offended too often are so easily "triggered" by other people being offended.

Not really (for me). I couldn't care less if you're offended. But if you start attacking me because I offended you (or someone else), and start making the general discussion impossible ("pissing in the pool"), then of course I'll oppose you, not because I'm "triggered", but simply because I want my discussion back! (And also because I don't think people should be fired for having opinions.)

Someone will mention equality or fairness and there will be a whole slew of people complaining

Only if they mention "equality" (e.g. affirmative action) and "fairness" (e.g. wage gap). That's not because our feeling are over-sensitive, but because we're over-sensitive to the bullshit arguments proponents of these ideas keep repeating as if they were the greatest achievements of logic and/or statistics.

glenda2• 10 years ago

Of course these discussions do get out of hand, and it's true that not all forms of inequality are completely valid in all cases, but it seems best to ignore the people you disagree with instead of trying to convince them to be like you. This goes for all discussions both on and offline. However, if you're in an arena where being argumentative is encouraged than you should have a better argument than "stop being so sensitive!" and the other side should have an argument other then "things are unfair" or else you barely even have a real conversation going.

Shivetya• 10 years ago

well there is no shortage of those who want to see the world burn and there is still a lot of anonymity in many of these tools. so the sycophants that join in the attacks are pretty insulated from responsibility for their actions while the higher profile instigators can pass off responsibility as well.

a common method that works in politics as well. leaders don't need to ask for those who support them to cross the line because they know there will be those who will and they derive benefit from their actions all the while decrying them.

social media is just the back room games of mover and shakers out in the open. the same rules but just more visible

VeejayRampay• 10 years ago

That tendency to react to other people's opinions and to be easily offended is a behaviour that is most prominent in the Anglo-Saxon world (and North America in particular) where defense groups and lobbies are powerful. I'm not commenting on whether or not that kind of policing is actually good or not, just that this is not "everyone", just "Some people in the Anglo-Saxon world, especially the United States".

EDIT: I live in France and I have never observed that kind of behaviour in the Latin world or Eastern Europe for example. Most of the time when someone would say something "offensive" that doesn't directly impact the people in the room, the reaction goes along the lines of "Well, that's your opinion, whatever" or some form of polite debate.

robgibbons• 10 years ago

At best, this author is misinterpreting Stephen's intent. At worst, it's an attempt to offendedly spin Stephen's post in exactly the way he described.

ftwynn• 10 years ago

For those that didn't read the article, I think the crux of it is here:

The subtext here is that cretinism is acceptable, but being a target is not. If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door. What kind of reasoning is that, and what kind of society does anyone think it’s going to create?

It's almost a call for more putting the blame in the right place, given that Twitter's sheer volume can take a grumble from an off-color joke at a party and multiply it by a thousand fold into something much harder to bear.

Whether the solution is technical or social, it seems like a real problem to me. We haven't had the ability to unify with similar voices in large numbers so quickly before. It should be unsurprising that when we do so for the first time we're a bit indiscriminate and heavy-handed with the power.

populacesoho• 10 years ago

Because we live in an age where real morals have been lost sight of, since deterministic faith in the correctness of any authority has been lost sight of ( thanks, Post Modernism ! ), people are scrambling to fabricate the authority of whatever they can grab nearest them ( since we all need a compass, even if it's just a finger drawing in the sand ) -- so it works to be prepared that you live in a world where someone else's subjective interpretation of their own offence taken at whatever they select, and the fallacy they delude themselves with that such offence makes them a fake victim of some fabricated "wrong", which they make to therefore mean that they are "right", does, they believe, afford them, what passes for moral value, these days. And, mostly, this incorrect belief, passes the smell test, and "seems legit", in contemporary discourse. As long as you claim you have been offended, you are fucking-completely-morally-right, so long as you can own the narrative on why you're a bigger victim than any other contenders for the crown of self-appointed righteous one. Welcome to the Age of the Biggest Fake Victim. Of course, the real evil starts when these self proclaimed victims use their self-anointed righteous status ( face-painted on themselves in the authority-skeptical moral vacuum of the present ), to pretend to justify whatever ways they try to harm others. Wait, are we talking about terrorists who pretend they are full fake-justified, because, of course, they are victims of the West's oppression -- or were we talking about just some fake-left liberal arts student at Cornell who's claiming to have been permanently damaged by whatever "offensive" idea their professor happened to raise in class? Or is that propensity to anoint the self proclaimed "offended fake victim" the status of "moral mother superior" really the same evil unworkable force behind both of these apparitions? You decide, dear reader. #CoddlingOfTheAmericanMind, #FakeVictimClaimingAbusesRealVictims

-- I value my tiny little accumulation of rep here. Please don't down vote unless you really, really thought it through and mean it. And if in any way you agree, upvote, you know...to protect me. ;)

twoquestions• 10 years ago

For those who don't want to comb through the article, the TL;DR seems to be:

"Criticism of bad behavior is good and necessary, but it far too easily spirals into a howling typhoon of nonstop vitriol and hate that's difficult for the target to deal with, especially if they're not rich/powerful."

Still I'd recommend reading, it's not as long as it looks.

Nexxxeh• 10 years ago

I take an opposing view, and not because of any love for Fry.

OP of TFA says, "I love Stephen Fry, really I do".

I am someone who loathes Stephen Fry, with his pseudo-intellectual wittering, his incorrect presumption of understanding of technical matters, and his flippant arrogance. He has been described as "a stupid person's idea of a clever person", something I wouldn't disagree with.

Watching him stupidly misinform viewers of Qi about how GPS works is one thing. Reading him butcher the history of Dr Gary Kildall is another. I'd argue the latter could reasonably be said to be "offensive" to most of the HN crowd.

With that said, I don't think Fry's wrong on this.

Twitter (and Tumblr) have become a hive for the professionally and vicariously offended. From the de-verifying of Milo Yiannopoulos, to this case which resulted in Fry sulking off Twitter yet again, Twitter especially seems to have it institutionally ingrained.

The bag lady remark was not unreasonable, nor mean-spirited. Nor was it taken as such by the lady in question.

If you don't like Twitter, you can log the heck off. One is not forced to use Twitter, certainly not with one's own real-world identity. If you don't like it, you can say so, take a bow, and take your 120 characters elsewhere. As Fry has done.

Twitter and Facebook are not the bastions of Free Speech they might claim to be, but they do host proponents of both sides of most debates. If you say something unpopular or something divisive, rightly or wrongly, you risk taking flack.

But a boatload of people calling you a dick on Twitter is not the equivalent of people throwing bricks through your window. Some people just need to get a perspective.

Free speech is a double-edged sword. It is, however, required for freedom, liberty, democracy, real equality and progress. Part of that is accepting people are going to say stuff that you personally don't like.

A lot of people will disagree with my views on Fry. He is effectively a British institution at this point. And that's fine. They can happily complain bitterly about my characterization of him, although the number people would actually care about what I say is probably rather small. That's all fine. That's free speech. And I'm sure we all agree free speech is preferable to the alternative.

Gorbzel• 10 years ago

Article makes some good points, but then rolls into an increasingly common "nerd" talking point that completely undercuts the point:

"It’s fine that no one cares about whatever dorky thing you’re into, but wow why would you make fun of the sacred and hallowed Super Bowl, which is so important to so many people, how could you be so inconsiderate"

and the strawman couldn't be more blatant absent some flame emoji.

Now, she didn't reference the tweets which provided the supposed context, but everyone's probably heard the "Ha ha, sportsball!" jokes from people who don't enjoy athletics. The problem isn't that people are making jokes about the popularity of sports, it's that the joke really isn't funny. Instead, it perpetuates the behavior the author claims to oppose — rather than be pleasant with one another and take at least a conversational interest in what someone's saying...let's be inconsiderate and vitriolic about one another's hobbies! This is wrong whether said hobby is football or League cosplay.

"I don’t think too many people are wanting for someone who’ll listen to them talk about football."

The strawman continues with vague references to undefined populations that strip people of their individuality. They're all rude sports bros, while we're enlightened board gamers.

"Yet I haven’t seen any comics and snarky jokes suggesting that sports fans listen to their friends rave about Warhammer.

Must not have been paying too much attention. Here ya go, guy is a pretty popular standup who notoriously loves nerds, hates sports, and has a show discussing internet culture with three comedians every weeknight(!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hardwick

At this point, you may be asking. Wait — this started about Stephen Fry and Twitter...why are we now talking about nerds vs sports? I'd ask the same thing of the author. The section is poorly though-out and explains nothing about power dynamics; Was hatred of one another's interest the most appropriate horse to hitch the "serious discussion of Twitter mobs" wagon to?

dawnbreez3• 10 years ago

I always wondered why people who take offense at what someone else says make such a big deal of it.

Tell 'em you don't like X, block 'em, and boom, you're done. No need to make 15btweets explaining just how much you hate [Scapegoat off the week here].

masklinn5• 10 years ago

Tell 'em you don't like X, block 'em, and boom, you're done.

Until X start automating the creation of new account and spamming your specifically because you blocked them of course.

dawnbreez3• 10 years ago

At that point, the whole conflict has become ridiculous. Who has the time to create a bot that automates creating accounts to spam, say, the N-word?

That's not even accounting for captchas.

michaelbuddy• 10 years ago

author of this article, has no idea of comparison. Some people who are offended, gather the torches and try to get somebody fired for having a different opinion. Stephen Fry is doing exactly what people who don't like a conversation should do, leave. As much as we can connect the digital world as real, kids should not be stressed or committing suicide over facebook. And race relations aren't going to be solved over twitter. Best to disconnect and take care of things one can control.

Shish2k• 10 years ago

While it's true that "A) I'm offended, change yourself to accomodate me" and "B) I'm offended, so I'm going to leave" are both forms of offence, it seems pretty dishonest to say "A and B are equal, you're a hypocrite to complain about A while doing B" :/

Everyone’s offended these days

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