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The presence of justice and the absence of tension are not the same thing. I think a lot of people have lived a large part of their lives completely insulated f

The presence of justice and the absence of tension are not the same thing. I think a lot of people have lived a large part of their lives completely insulated from the tension that has existed in society over social justice issues for centuries. Now that you can go on Twitter and find out exactly how and why everyone is mad, it looks like comity and mutual respect has evaporated. But really what has happened is that the absence of tension engendered by the undemocratic dissemination of information in the pre-Internet age has been revealed to be a lie: people have been angry for a while and they're angry for reasons. Shocking. Asking someone to shut up is much easier than assuming they're acting in good faith and have reasonable motivations that you can't perceive, because, you know, it's the Internet and nothing is more ridiculous than a person looking at the Internet and nodding condescendingly while explaining the exact nature of all these human beings they disagree with. If from the get-go you assume people are acting in bad faith and you demand that they admit that this is the case before you even consider them as reasonable people, you are asking for full surrender instead of treating them as equals.

chc 11y ago
> people have been angry for a while and they're angry for reasons The reason they're mad here, evidently, is that Stephen made a joke to his friend. It doesn't seem like it's Stephen who failed to assume good faith.
- danharaj 11y ago
  he made a joke to his friend in public. i have friends to whom i could shout "i hope you fucking die, you bloated moist abscess" at, but if i did that on twitter as a famous person without the context of our friendship readily visible, what people ought to think? once it came to light that he was ribbing his good friend, then people ought to have apologized and moved on. it doesn't make them terrible people for being a little on edge about powerful famous men ribbing less powerful, less famous women. the world isn't in the shitter just because he was misunderstood on twitter.
  - chc 11y ago
    But didn't you just say, "If from the get-go you assume people are acting in bad faith and you demand that they admit that this is the case before you even consider them as reasonable people, you are asking for full surrender instead of treating them as equals"? Isn't failing to do this precisely the source of the outrage? And yet now you seem to be suggesting it was perfectly reasonable for people to assume bad faith and try to tear him down, up until good faith was proven.
    - danharaj 11y ago
      I think we're using different notions of good and bad faith. My notion of good faith is sincerity and reasonableness in intention, likewise bad faith is insincerity and unreasonableness in intention. All these people got outraged by interpreting Fry's tweet offensively. Are they doing it for kicks? (insincerity) or are they just stupid? (unreasonableness) I don't think good and bad faith is a quality of their behavior, but of their intent and mental competence as human beings. Someone can get incredibly outraged but be sincere and capable of explaining their feelings reasonably. It doesn't mean that one assumes the best in others, because that is just as spurious as assuming the worst in others. One should just call it like they see it and think it, nothing more, nothing less.
13thLetter 11y ago
> But really what has happened is that the absence of tension engendered by the undemocratic dissemination of information in the pre-Internet age has been revealed to be a lie: people have been angry for a while and they're angry for reasons. Shocking. How would we tell the difference between "people have always been angry, this just exposes it" and "the pathological design of social networks like Twitter makes people angry when they wouldn't have otherwise been"?

chc 11y ago

> people have been angry for a while and they're angry for reasons The reason they're mad here, evidently, is that Stephen made a joke to his friend. It doesn't seem like it's Stephen who failed to assume good faith.

danharaj 11y ago
he made a joke to his friend in public. i have friends to whom i could shout "i hope you fucking die, you bloated moist abscess" at, but if i did that on twitter as a famous person without the context of our friendship readily visible, what people ought to think? once it came to light that he was ribbing his good friend, then people ought to have apologized and moved on. it doesn't make them terrible people for being a little on edge about powerful famous men ribbing less powerful, less famous women. the world isn't in the shitter just because he was misunderstood on twitter.
- chc 11y ago
  But didn't you just say, "If from the get-go you assume people are acting in bad faith and you demand that they admit that this is the case before you even consider them as reasonable people, you are asking for full surrender instead of treating them as equals"? Isn't failing to do this precisely the source of the outrage? And yet now you seem to be suggesting it was perfectly reasonable for people to assume bad faith and try to tear him down, up until good faith was proven.
  - danharaj 11y ago
    I think we're using different notions of good and bad faith. My notion of good faith is sincerity and reasonableness in intention, likewise bad faith is insincerity and unreasonableness in intention. All these people got outraged by interpreting Fry's tweet offensively. Are they doing it for kicks? (insincerity) or are they just stupid? (unreasonableness) I don't think good and bad faith is a quality of their behavior, but of their intent and mental competence as human beings. Someone can get incredibly outraged but be sincere and capable of explaining their feelings reasonably. It doesn't mean that one assumes the best in others, because that is just as spurious as assuming the worst in others. One should just call it like they see it and think it, nothing more, nothing less.

13thLetter 11y ago

> But really what has happened is that the absence of tension engendered by the undemocratic dissemination of information in the pre-Internet age has been revealed to be a lie: people have been angry for a while and they're angry for reasons. Shocking. How would we tell the difference between "people have always been angry, this just exposes it" and "the pathological design of social networks like Twitter makes people angry when they wouldn't have otherwise been"?