3 ms·

One of the things on my abstract wishlist is a hope that we as a culture can move away from this trend of saying terrible, awful things under the guise of 'iron

One of the things on my abstract wishlist is a hope that we as a culture can move away from this trend of saying terrible, awful things under the guise of 'irony'. > In an interview with Howard Stern in the mid-’90s, the radio host asked him about a character in the comic book anthology the cartoonist was then promoting. Stern called Sody Pop “a hot chick with big cans and nice legs.” Kricfalusi responded with a smile: “She’s underage, too.” I think anybody would raise an eyebrow at that. It's a messed up statement. But because it's in the context of this conversation with a shock-jock, because it's _clearly_ ironic, it's _clearly a joke, why are you taking it so seriously, lighten up_, nobody called him on the fact that he was saying something incredibly messed up, and maybe if somebody had, then this would have come to light earlier. I understand that freedom of speech is great and people are free to make whatever jokes they want. But just because they CAN doesn't mean they SHOULD, and if people stopped making jokes about being a pedophile, about being a predator, about being a nazi or a misogynist, I think we'd be better off.

gdulli 9y ago
Howard Stern is also the venue where Trump talked about walking in on beauty pageant contestants while they were naked. And that was without irony.
0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago
I don't want them pretending to be normal. Why do you want that?
- CocaKoala 9y ago
  It's not that I want pedophiles to act normal and do a better job of hiding their abuses; rather, I'd just be happier if a) when somebody straight up says something that's gross like that, it gets called out and investigated and b) people don't make gross jokes like that to be edgy.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  I don't either. But I do want things like that to be more eyebrow raising, instead of everyone just assumes they're making a joke.
tmuir 9y ago
I've come to call this the abuse of polymorphic language. Polymorphic, meaning many shapes, is predominantly an object oriented software term, but it is obviously applicable to language as well. Any sort of allegory, symbolism, irony, comedy, homophones, etc are examples of this. Polymorphic phrases always give their speaker plausible deniability of the "dog whistle" part of the speech, by allowing them to claim they were meaning the clean phrase. This is literally a product of English being an evolving language, borrowing from so many different other languages. This is precisely why many legal terms, and most medical terms are in latin. Latin is nearly perfectly specific. Although "confidence" can take different contexts, all of those contexts share the meaning "with trust", even if the trust is misplaced in some cases. Context is always context. "To tie or weave together", is always the meaning behind "context" Controversy is always controversy. "To turn away" is always the meaning behind "context" Confuse is always confuse. "To rout, or bring to ruin" One way I've been able to employ this knowledge, without actually speaking pure latin, is to fold this specificity of latin back onto the polymorphism of English. Essentially, if you can see a trend in someones behavior that maps to a Latin word, and they are consistent with that behavior, I've found that the meaning behind the combination of the individual phonemes is strikingly accurate in describing at least that person's general trajectory, if not their intent. For example, someone who is always injecting controversy, and never providing context, Like Howard Stern for instance, is generally trying to turn his listeners away from the people he is lambasting. In the converse, if you have people in your life that have convinced you that they always have your best interest at heart, and you can see that they have actually followed through usually, that person predominantly communicates with you by providing context, instead of injecting controversy.

gdulli 9y ago

Howard Stern is also the venue where Trump talked about walking in on beauty pageant contestants while they were naked. And that was without irony.

0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago

I don't want them pretending to be normal. Why do you want that?

CocaKoala 9y ago
It's not that I want pedophiles to act normal and do a better job of hiding their abuses; rather, I'd just be happier if a) when somebody straight up says something that's gross like that, it gets called out and investigated and b) people don't make gross jokes like that to be edgy.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
I don't either. But I do want things like that to be more eyebrow raising, instead of everyone just assumes they're making a joke.

tmuir 9y ago

I've come to call this the abuse of polymorphic language. Polymorphic, meaning many shapes, is predominantly an object oriented software term, but it is obviously applicable to language as well. Any sort of allegory, symbolism, irony, comedy, homophones, etc are examples of this. Polymorphic phrases always give their speaker plausible deniability of the "dog whistle" part of the speech, by allowing them to claim they were meaning the clean phrase. This is literally a product of English being an evolving language, borrowing from so many different other languages. This is precisely why many legal terms, and most medical terms are in latin. Latin is nearly perfectly specific. Although "confidence" can take different contexts, all of those contexts share the meaning "with trust", even if the trust is misplaced in some cases. Context is always context. "To tie or weave together", is always the meaning behind "context" Controversy is always controversy. "To turn away" is always the meaning behind "context" Confuse is always confuse. "To rout, or bring to ruin" One way I've been able to employ this knowledge, without actually speaking pure latin, is to fold this specificity of latin back onto the polymorphism of English. Essentially, if you can see a trend in someones behavior that maps to a Latin word, and they are consistent with that behavior, I've found that the meaning behind the combination of the individual phonemes is strikingly accurate in describing at least that person's general trajectory, if not their intent. For example, someone who is always injecting controversy, and never providing context, Like Howard Stern for instance, is generally trying to turn his listeners away from the people he is lambasting. In the converse, if you have people in your life that have convinced you that they always have your best interest at heart, and you can see that they have actually followed through usually, that person predominantly communicates with you by providing context, instead of injecting controversy.