5 ms·
Direct anecdote: A couple of years ago, I worked with a large team and there was a gay man on the team who was constantly yapping on about gay this and gay tha
by stirfrykitty 8y ago
Direct anecdote:
A couple of years ago, I worked with a large team and there was a gay man on the team who was constantly yapping on about gay this and gay that, almost like he was looking for disapproval among the ranks. He then decided to do a legal union with his boyfriend and invited everyone. Those who did not attend were berated, verbally accused of this and that. I counseled everyone to simply ignore him and not take the bait, which ended up being sound judgement, because he took his leave shortly thereafter. I never engaged in ad-hominem attacks or retaliated against this man. I just refused to play his childish game of attacking people for some imagined reasons.
Linus, Theo, and other large project leaders deal with actual idiots all the time. Serial idiots. Sometimes in the real world you have to step on toes to get someone's attention. It can often be done in "nicer" ways, but sometimes you have to "nuke them from orbit" just to be sure.
Recently, my British uncle told me of a story about a woman in England who went apoplectic about a new tissue range having the marketing slogan "man-sized" tissues. Who cares? It's marketing. The company actually caved to please this woman. I would not have done so. My tissues, my slogan. Don't buy them if you're offended.
- brenschluss 8y agoWhy are you so offended about other people being offended? Why not just say, “this must be a big issue to them”? Why do you feel the need to prove that these things don’t offend you, and that thus they shouldn’t offend others?
- stirfrykitty 8y agoI'm not "offended". I'm sick and tired of political correctness invading every aspect of life. Leave it for the politicians. I'm not going to change who I am to please someone else. Everyone else is already taken. Like most people, I have strong views on many things, and some of those things are hills worth dying for. Other things are more grey and I overlook them or simply don't care at all. It's come to a place now in society where even silence can be taken the wrong way. I've been accused of being politically incorrect over the years because I refuse to cotton to certain things the mainstream embraces, but I refuse to budge. My convictions are mine and mine alone. I don't try and change other people's convictions. But... if you stand for nothing, you fall for anything.
- DonaldPShimoda 8y ago> I'm not "offended". I'm sick and tired of political correctness invading every aspect of life. This is like a gay person saying "I'm not 'offended'. I'm sick and tired of anti-gay sentiment invading every aspect of life." Your lack of introspection is showing through. You want to be able to say and act however you feel is appropriate — which is fine —, but you don't want other people to be able to call you out for what you say and do. This makes no sense, because those people are just saying and acting however they feel is appropriate — by calling you out. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
- brenschluss 8y agoSociety is changing. You don't have to. People will judge you for what you say, the same way that you judge others for what they say. What it seems here is that, while you judge others, you demand for the right to not be judged by others.
- jodrellblank 8y agoYou're on HN so you have some tech education and access to computing resources. You speak English, probably at a native level. You've been a marine which probably means US Army. You're very likely male, and white, and American from birth, and comparatively wealthy - vehicle owning, at least. Straight, CIS gendered, Christian, Jewish or atheist, physically and mentally mostly healthy, and between 18 and 60 years old? If so, you sit at the top of a power hierarchy of hundreds of years of dominator culture, in the best possible region you could be in. Certainly your individual experience of life won't be Donald Trump just because you own a car, certainly you have problems in life that you fought against and overcame with difficulty, that doesn't say your life is easy full stop. It says your baseline position is vastly above a whole lot of other people. You might not fit this profile exactly, you may be Black, Mexican, have emigrated as a child, have struggled with poverty or single parent childhood, and so on. But you probably aren't far outside this, you probably aren't a Fillipino immigrant with no education learning English age 30 and working a labouring job, or a South Indian woman in an arranged marriage with no driving license and no access to money, or etc. Other people suffer the same kinds of individual problems of life, but do so starting from a much lower baseline, that's the bit that's unfair. Not the idea "everyone has problems" but the idea "some people have problems, other people ahve double problems, and we could fix it so they don't". That is, someone attending a poor inner city school has a worse outcome than someone attending a wealthy suburban school. Yet you can still find suburban school students who have a difficult time and a bad outcome, and inner city school students who overcome the problems and have a great outcome. Neither of those changes the overall dynamic that poor inner city schools have worse outcomes overall. This kind of discussion is always "I have problems at my inner city school" "well I had problems at my suburban school too, so stop complaining" or "well I had inner city school problems as well and I overcame them, so stop complaining". Completely invalidating a large number of inner city school students who justifiably and validly feel the situation is unbalanced and unfair, and want to do something to make it more fair in general. Privileged person saying "I'm sick and tired of hearing about your complaints" isn't a great position stick to and take pride in.
- mbrumlow 8y agoI am perfect find on people being offended. What I am not fine with is that the notion of being offended translates into anything other than the person simply being offended. EG, offending somebody -- because it is so subjective -- should simply be that, they are offended. END OF STORY. But right now being offended is as if you walked up to somebody and spit in their face, or worse punched them. And the actions being taken by those who "offend" are on par with actions you would take had somebody physically attacked another person.
- tptacek 8y agoYour odd story does not in fact provide logical evidence for the need to "nuke [anyone] from orbit".
- tarsolya 8y agoThe use of power have no needs, nor does it required to be justified by "logical evidence". It's only requirement is to have it and a choice to use it. Isn't it a near perfect sleight-of-hand to subvert societies into celebrating weakness as the ultimate virtue, turning it into straight up a currency for power used to nuke a narrowly defined "anyone" from orbit? Edit: Added 'narrowly defined' to the last sentence.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]