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Some do so because they truly believe that behind every expression, joke, depiction or statement hides a carefully positioned insult, rejection, conspiracy or offence, furthermore obviously meant to incite violence, exclusion and discrimination. Others merely do so because being the first to spot and unmask some evil will earn them extra cred within the SJW community and help them to therapeutically cope with all their personal issues. Just make sure you're the first to raise a point, even if your claims are false. Spit it out on social media; others will accept your claims, unsubstantiated though they may be, because the mindless drones who are active on FB, Twitter, ... go straight from accusation to conviction and don't care about the trial itself.
So I agree, @cooperman2, that free speech, while still officially a fundamental right, has been placed between brackets by a crusading minority. Yet while a minority, these people seem to be frighteningly effective in getting things done, things with lots of names but which essentially boil down to censorship. There's still free speech... but if some celebrity says something slightly controversial, Twitter, preferred playground for the lower-IQ layers of society, turns into a warzone. A few incidents with James Gunn, J.K. Rowling and Kevin Hart later, others have grown weary and prefer not to speak their gut, or rather merely say what the SJW elite finds acceptable.
I don't like this at all.
Grease got an uncut showing over Christmas on the BBC. So, so much for that idea...
'Woke brigade' indeed; if there was something I'd moan about it would certainly be the use of that kind of terminology. The word 'woke' being used with a straight face to complain about something is usually a massive red flag to me.
That is letting you make your mind up.
Grease in the hair ;)
I don't really tend to like it when people say they speak for the silent majority- that's what these Trump/Brexit/anti-masker etc. folks prey on: "The minority elite want to stop us doing this!" etc. Generally that's a bit of an illusion conjured to make people angry and follow them. They don't speak for 'the people', they speak for some people.
There certainly are overreactions, and you're right about people doing it to take a prize- it's the gamification of the whole thing: they literally win points if they start a movement. But then that just happened up there too: claiming Grease has been 'cancelled' when really the reverse just happened: it hasn't had an uncut showing before last month in decades, I think. And identifying this 'elite minority' as the 'woke brigade': really that's just two sides of the same thing- trying to get people stirred up.
So sometimes there are overreactions, but then also sometimes people do do unbelievably unacceptable things. We were just talking in this very thread about how clearly there is sexism aimed at women in the movie industry- does that make us 'SJW elite' to have noticed that? No-one should generalise the overreactions and the actually unacceptable into being one thing: there are shades of difference. Because if you do then you get people being wilfully sexist and racist because they think of it as some kind of points-scoring win over those they have been told are the 'woke elite' trying to tell the good honest 'majority' what to do.
+1
Very well, put @mtm
+1, thanks for crystallizing my thoughts into comprehendible text.
As for the topic du jour: The stuff that really gets my pulse up is people with huge platforms saying they are no longer allowed to speak their mind. Being on a TV segment or speaking in a parliament or having a Twitter account with millions of followers are platforms that only comparatively few people in the history of humanity ever had, if you think about it. Yes, I know it's annoying if people very loudly disagree with you and make fun of you. I wouldn't want that. But you can't have the platform to air your views to literally potentially billions of people and demand no one push back, ever.
That's my two cents.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "mincing one's words is nevertheless part of the deal too."
It seems to be important to remember (not you specifically Dimi as I'm sure you know) that the constitutional first amendment seems to simply say the government will not make laws prohibiting free speech, practice and formation of religion, and peaceful gathering and protest. Effectively it will not arrest you for what you say. There are a lot of people comparing a Twitter ban or loss of employment due to what they say as an infringement on free speech, which to me, it seems it is not.
Twitter is a private corporation and can refuse service to anyone for any reasons (bar discrimination), and as far as I know, can employers not terminate any employee for any reason as long as proper severance is paid out?
I suppose it's true that we live in a reality where there are overreaching consequences for speaking out about your opinion these days, which is certainly a shame, but to me that's a court-of-public-opinion, marketing-through-virtue-signaling problem, and not a freedom of speech problem.
Ha! Yes I love those guys. Saying loudly that they've not been allowed to speak their mind to their millions of followers on Twitter, then saying that they've not been allowed to speak their mind in their newspaper column, then saying they've not been allowed to speak their mind on their radio show, then saying they've not been allowed to speak their mind on YouTube etc. etc.
"The minority elite won't let me speak!" :))
There's a great joke about this exact thing in "Death to 2020" on Netflix, performed by Lisa Kudrow as a Kellyanne Conway-type.
I don't know what the 'mincing words' bit refers to I'm afraid, but speaking one's mind does not mean that no-one is allowed to then take issue with what one has said.
And don't forget: you yourself Darth are a moderator on this forum. If someone says enough offensive and unpleasant stuff, they get kicked off. They are 'cancelled' on this place, I'm sure you've probably had to do it yourself at some point. Is there free speech on here? Is there an absolute right to speak one's mind on MI6?
That's not a complaint about the forum incidentally, just that here, as everywhere, if you piss enough people off they won't want to hear from you anymore. Free speech only works if people want to listen to you.
What I am saying is that some reactions to certain statements can be pretty sour and, in the age of social media, cause a usually short-lived but meanwhile freaky outrage during which a typically "famous" person can quickly become the target of people who skip the debate and go straight to a conviction. That's what bothers me. A few words pulled from their context lead to anger before people have set down to actually talk about the issue, which is what we are doing right now.
Obviously both sides -- assuming there are only two sides -- make exactly the same mistakes, as has been correctly pointed out. When I made sole reference to SJW, I did so from a personal frustration and I probably shouldn't have.
Mincing words... Ah yes. It's what I have to do every day. I must choose my words carefully and sometimes "bend" my opinion a little. For example, I can say that I like Harry Potter but not that I respect J.K. Rowling. I did so the other day and had to spend the better part of an hour explaining to students that I have no issues with the LGBTQ community. But my case was lost nevertheless, because no less than four e-mails were sent by "concerned parents", not to me but to my school principal, basically calling me a homophobe, which I am absolutely not. I was asked by my "superiors" to next time avoid the issue or simply openly support the popular view, even if that view isn't mine. And while none of this took place in a court, it still feels like free speech somehow took a beating, hence why I wrote that it is put between brackets.
I did not youtube, facebook, tweet or Instagram about this. The accusation that complainers make the same mistake doesn't in that sense apply to me. I did talk about it here because this forum isn't the same thing as addressing the entire world; here, we're having actual conversations and I merely responded to a point raised by someone else.
Lastly, removing accounts because some people bully, troll or spam the hell put of this place, has nothing to do with the topic at hand. We never ban people because of their opinion. Some members would love it if we did and are, in fact, pretty upset with us for not flat-out banning people who disagree with them, often resulting in highly animated private chats, but opinions have never gotten people banned. We do not object to free speech, we object to people willingly causing trouble by directly attacking others. Name-calling, for example, is an unwelcome form of social conduct, not an opinion. To say that you disagree with someone because of this or that reason has never not been okay, but to persistently attack others and use strong insults as a means of addressing someone is a problem which has nothing to do with speaking one's mind but with doing so in a respectful manner.
So I am perfectly happy to apologize if my previous post lacked nuance and was fueled by a personal bias which I have tied to explain even if that doesn't justify it. At the same time, I remain convinced that the "public court" isn't such an innocent thing considering the fact that its "judgements" really can have quite an impact on people's lives, effectively lead to censorship of some form or another, and silence debates that people should be having instead. Said public court isn't itself yet another form of free speech which I am now trying to destroy in my own way, but a blatant attempt at discouraging further statements of some sort.
And by the way, all of the above is merely my opinion, and I would never pretend it to be factual truth.
I hope this clarifies things. 🙂
Indeed, and we agree, but there's a problem with labelling those as the 'woke elite' or minority or whatever, because making them the enemy who are trying to silence us good honest people just encourages a war and provokes more and more extreme opinions.
Fair enough.
I'm not sure the classroom has ever been a place where teachers are supposed to speak their minds unfiltered, has it?
Well now we're qualifying what free speech is, what it does and doesn't include, therefore it's not totally free. And you'd never ban anyone for, for example, extreme sexist or racist comments?
Well no-one is saying it's innocent: I got extremely annoyed this week when a celeb posted a link on Twitter to one of those Auschwitz T-shirts from the Capitol attack last week being sold on Etsy and called for a boycott of Etsy, a really quite stupid thing to do which would harm many small businesses (Etsy is a marketplace, not one shop), but she didn't think about the effect of her actions, it was just an instant decision of 'this is bad' with any nuance. But even so, I did agree that the shirt wasn't really a hugely funny joke and really quite unpleasant, and I doubt you'd consider turning up to school wearing one! :)
Yes, I hate the automatic silencing of debate on those subjects too: the JK Rowling one is a great example and that's a subject I think could use plenty of debate, but it is shouted down as soon as its started. But I also absolutely deplore anyone who complains of 'the woke brigade' as if white males have it really bad suddenly. In terms of TV and films and other media it shows a weird lack of empathy, as if we need to see a white man on screen in order to follow what they're doing. When I see the word 'woke' being invoked it just says 'bigoted views ahead' to me.
Also, please stop refering to the virus as if it's a sentient being that makes plans and strategies for infecting people or 'evading' vaccines, it's just cells and biology at the end of the day so please describe it in more scientific terms and less like in we're still in flipping WWII and we have a great enemy to defeat. Of course, Boris Johnson's language in his TV announcements haven't helped with this.
As a German born after reunification, this is something that I can just not fathom on a very basic level, which makes it so fascinating.
(And Bond obviously is a large part of this fascination.)
Obviously the dead should be commemorated, but we're still celebrating the war, it's ridiculous. I found the VE Day street parties etc. last year just stupid considering the situation we were in, to be honest.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/drunk-james-bond-fans-visiting-23322158
I hope no mi6 members got drunk there
It's a fresh start then, Ludovico. I wish you the best of luck in your new job, mate.
Sounds like a turn for the better, I hope it all works out. I've found myself in the past that it's too easy to stay in a job you're not happy with and things can improve with a change, although of course I know nothing is certain and when I quit to go freelance (i.e. with no job to go to) I felt like I'd chucked myself off a building, but it did work out for the better.
Believe me when I say I know where you're coming from. I'm so glad you got something better. It's proof there's a silver lining to every cloud. Being relatively happy at your work means a lot. All the best with your new position.
Well, not so new now, I've been I'm the place since July.
That's good to know you've settled in well, then. You now know how the place runs beyond the positive facade of the first week impressions that some workplaces can engender!
Yes that's very true. It didn't take me long to hate my previous job: after a few weeks I started having a seriously bad feeling about it due to office politics and after six months I've had enough and wanted out. I lasted three years.
It's a strange time: I have been working from home for nearly a year and haven't seen my new colleagues in person. It's contractual, so I'm already looking for a new job, but I'm very glad I don't work for my previous employers anymore.