4 ms·

I say this without snark, but the only way I can imagine someone actually thinks this, is because that someone is not well read on history, or holds values that

I say this without snark, but the only way I can imagine someone actually thinks this, is because that someone is not well read on history, or holds values that were more in vogue to be "traumatized" for in such past generations. People forget that in those older societies, people were killed, jailed and fined for holding certain beliefs. People were literally burnt at the stake, witch hunts were something more serious than a twitter mob complaining, intellectuals wrote lengthy arguments about the immorality of certain views; for christ sake, "Marge & Itchy and Scratchy" is almost 30 years old. So yeah, I hold the opinion that people who think today's society is more easily offended than past generations are either too disconnected to what past generations really were, or is shocked to find themselves on the receiving end.

coldtea 7y ago
We had dictatorships, civil wars, and other such things in my country not that long ago. I have relatives who went through those things -- and other modern tragedies today. I have befriended, talked to, and interviewed people jailed and tortured for decades for their beliefs. Even family killed by previous regimes. So, it's not like I don't know that people "were killed, jailed and fined for holding certain beliefs". I do know however that people that had those things happen to them in real-time history and in their full horror, were much more resilient, courageous, and could even shrug them off. The touchy feely, safe-space demanding people today, who get discouraged or hysterical for 1/1000th the offense done to them, are a regression and an insult to those people (whose actual sacrifices and efforts gave the rights to the snowflakes of today).
- marstomorrow 7y ago
  > I do know however that people that had those things happen to them in real-time history and in their full horror, were much more resilient, courageous, and could even shrug them off. This is wildly untrue and outrageously offensive. Do you really think this? What evidence do you have for this? Today's youth are experiencing their own valid forms of discrimination, hate and violence fed by trolls and you are no judge of their pain. And why are you doing this whataboutism with the past anyway? What do you have to gain from saying lambasting those who suffer and whom with you share so little you can surely hardly understand their circumstance? > The touchy feely, safe-space demanding people today, who get discouraged or hysterical for 1/1000th the offense done to them, Who are these people? Do they really exist? I think you have made up, invented an enemy towards which you are directing these statements. > are a regression and an insult to those people (whose actual sacrifices and efforts gave the rights to the snowflakes of today). How on earth? Everyone I know today who cares to improve society is trying to avoid the atrocities of the past. Positing that reasonable discourse, backed by facts and logic, with an avoidance of 'trolling' and bad-faith acting, is a direct attempt to reduce the suffering and pain of the future so that we can avoid such horrible things from the past from happening again. Your callous dismissal of today's youth looking to improve the world by reducing the spread of hatred and violence is exactly the kind of thing that enabled such horrid violence in the past. We can see history rhyming. We can see the genocides being committed around the world, fed and enabled by trolls, and we are trying to stop it from happening. We are trying to slow down the intentional suffering hoist upon minorities today by reducing the online vitriol and hatred that creates such physical horror.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >This is wildly untrue and outrageously offensive. Do you really think this? What evidence do you have for this? This is wildly true, and 100% not offensive. I've talked to such people, I'm in a country with actual historical scars and full of people that went through extreme hardships, I've interviewed dozens of them people, I've read tons of historical accounts, interviews, and so on. >Today's youth are experiencing their own valid forms of discrimination, hate and violence fed by trolls and you are no judge of their pain Well, I can be the judge of their pain (it's a free universe), and I can tell you that their pain of "discrimination, hate, and violence caused by trolls" is nothing compared to war, civil war, dictatorship, genocide, torture, and so on (all of which experienced numerous times in the last 100 years in my country). It's a sad state of affairs that this has to even be spelt out, or that people think someone being called names by online trolls, or harassed at school for being X, or whatever, is as serious and as important as those kinds of events.
    - marstomorrow 7y ago
      > Well, I can be the judge of their pain (it's a free universe), and I can tell you that their pain of "discrimination, hate, and violence caused by trolls" is nothing compared to war, civil war, dictatorship, genocide, torture, and so on (all of which experienced numerous times in the last 100 years in my country). The pain the trolls are creating is directly causing war, discrimination, dictatorship, genocide. And regardless, there is no need to obsess over who "had it worse" or whatever. Young people today are speaking out and trying to avoid the direct causes of the horrible genocides that happen when hate speech is left unregulated. They are not 'snowflakes'. They are trying to avoid genocide and war. Your seeming inability to understand that youth are interested in improving the world through empathy and understanding and peaceful conversation, and your insistence that youth are 'snowflakes', and your dedication to refusing to understand the grander issues of trolling at scale, really makes you seem like a snowflake yourself. Just saying.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >The pain the trolls are creating is directly causing war, discrimination, dictatorship, genocide. And regardless, there is no need to obsess over who "had it worse" or whatever. Not really. From the native Americans to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, the US (and Western Europe and USSR for that matter) did war, genocide, discrimination, segregation, slavery, and so on, very well, on a huge scale, without trolls. Trolls are absolutely insignificant in causing "war, discrimination, dictatorship, genocide". If anything, our "troll heavy" days are much better in all of the above terms. And if you mean the infamous "Kremlin trolls", those are just the fad of the day, to point them blame on someone. The US had and will again do its thing in the middle east for oil, regardless of what some Facebook troll says. And they'll compete and go to trade war with China for their private interests, regardless of what Twitter says.
- licebmi__at__ 7y ago
  I don't see how that disproves my point, I also come from a country with a recent and ongoing history of hardship, just 6 years ago while I was on vacation, a shootout happen in front of my home while my father and I were painting; actual bullet holes were made on the wall we were working on, and yet after we saw the cars flee, my dad just shrug it off and continued painting. Yes, I know that people can be resilient and adapt to life's hardships And still, social sensitivities can be quite complex. My dad, a man who accepted a rain of bullets as just one more of the life's hardships, can get quite uncomfortable to the point of refusing to eat, if you insist on passing the salt on his hand instead of leaving it on the table near him, and I just picked one of the weirder but he and a lot of people have some petty stuff that causes them great offense. With the examples I gave on GP, my point was not that people endured hardships, but that people who offended societies sensibilities were harshly punished. If you think that society that got so offended by stuff like blasphemy, sexual preferences, and failing to follow caste systems or even other weird social customs, are more courageous or have a tougher skin, then we have a different definition of courage. And I say this without making a moral judgement, maybe severe punishment from deviancy served as a societal glue that allowed to thrive despite the material hardships, or perhaps a case can be made on the pathological aspect of having real hardships and still devoting so much time on irrelevant stuff. Still my point is that I don't think people got any less offended than nowdays, and perhaps watching today's punishments on the offenders, maybe that's one indicator where we are getting better.

coldtea 7y ago

We had dictatorships, civil wars, and other such things in my country not that long ago. I have relatives who went through those things -- and other modern tragedies today. I have befriended, talked to, and interviewed people jailed and tortured for decades for their beliefs. Even family killed by previous regimes. So, it's not like I don't know that people "were killed, jailed and fined for holding certain beliefs". I do know however that people that had those things happen to them in real-time history and in their full horror, were much more resilient, courageous, and could even shrug them off. The touchy feely, safe-space demanding people today, who get discouraged or hysterical for 1/1000th the offense done to them, are a regression and an insult to those people (whose actual sacrifices and efforts gave the rights to the snowflakes of today).

marstomorrow 7y ago
> I do know however that people that had those things happen to them in real-time history and in their full horror, were much more resilient, courageous, and could even shrug them off. This is wildly untrue and outrageously offensive. Do you really think this? What evidence do you have for this? Today's youth are experiencing their own valid forms of discrimination, hate and violence fed by trolls and you are no judge of their pain. And why are you doing this whataboutism with the past anyway? What do you have to gain from saying lambasting those who suffer and whom with you share so little you can surely hardly understand their circumstance? > The touchy feely, safe-space demanding people today, who get discouraged or hysterical for 1/1000th the offense done to them, Who are these people? Do they really exist? I think you have made up, invented an enemy towards which you are directing these statements. > are a regression and an insult to those people (whose actual sacrifices and efforts gave the rights to the snowflakes of today). How on earth? Everyone I know today who cares to improve society is trying to avoid the atrocities of the past. Positing that reasonable discourse, backed by facts and logic, with an avoidance of 'trolling' and bad-faith acting, is a direct attempt to reduce the suffering and pain of the future so that we can avoid such horrible things from the past from happening again. Your callous dismissal of today's youth looking to improve the world by reducing the spread of hatred and violence is exactly the kind of thing that enabled such horrid violence in the past. We can see history rhyming. We can see the genocides being committed around the world, fed and enabled by trolls, and we are trying to stop it from happening. We are trying to slow down the intentional suffering hoist upon minorities today by reducing the online vitriol and hatred that creates such physical horror.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >This is wildly untrue and outrageously offensive. Do you really think this? What evidence do you have for this? This is wildly true, and 100% not offensive. I've talked to such people, I'm in a country with actual historical scars and full of people that went through extreme hardships, I've interviewed dozens of them people, I've read tons of historical accounts, interviews, and so on. >Today's youth are experiencing their own valid forms of discrimination, hate and violence fed by trolls and you are no judge of their pain Well, I can be the judge of their pain (it's a free universe), and I can tell you that their pain of "discrimination, hate, and violence caused by trolls" is nothing compared to war, civil war, dictatorship, genocide, torture, and so on (all of which experienced numerous times in the last 100 years in my country). It's a sad state of affairs that this has to even be spelt out, or that people think someone being called names by online trolls, or harassed at school for being X, or whatever, is as serious and as important as those kinds of events.
  - marstomorrow 7y ago
    > Well, I can be the judge of their pain (it's a free universe), and I can tell you that their pain of "discrimination, hate, and violence caused by trolls" is nothing compared to war, civil war, dictatorship, genocide, torture, and so on (all of which experienced numerous times in the last 100 years in my country). The pain the trolls are creating is directly causing war, discrimination, dictatorship, genocide. And regardless, there is no need to obsess over who "had it worse" or whatever. Young people today are speaking out and trying to avoid the direct causes of the horrible genocides that happen when hate speech is left unregulated. They are not 'snowflakes'. They are trying to avoid genocide and war. Your seeming inability to understand that youth are interested in improving the world through empathy and understanding and peaceful conversation, and your insistence that youth are 'snowflakes', and your dedication to refusing to understand the grander issues of trolling at scale, really makes you seem like a snowflake yourself. Just saying.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >The pain the trolls are creating is directly causing war, discrimination, dictatorship, genocide. And regardless, there is no need to obsess over who "had it worse" or whatever. Not really. From the native Americans to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, the US (and Western Europe and USSR for that matter) did war, genocide, discrimination, segregation, slavery, and so on, very well, on a huge scale, without trolls. Trolls are absolutely insignificant in causing "war, discrimination, dictatorship, genocide". If anything, our "troll heavy" days are much better in all of the above terms. And if you mean the infamous "Kremlin trolls", those are just the fad of the day, to point them blame on someone. The US had and will again do its thing in the middle east for oil, regardless of what some Facebook troll says. And they'll compete and go to trade war with China for their private interests, regardless of what Twitter says.
licebmi__at__ 7y ago
I don't see how that disproves my point, I also come from a country with a recent and ongoing history of hardship, just 6 years ago while I was on vacation, a shootout happen in front of my home while my father and I were painting; actual bullet holes were made on the wall we were working on, and yet after we saw the cars flee, my dad just shrug it off and continued painting. Yes, I know that people can be resilient and adapt to life's hardships And still, social sensitivities can be quite complex. My dad, a man who accepted a rain of bullets as just one more of the life's hardships, can get quite uncomfortable to the point of refusing to eat, if you insist on passing the salt on his hand instead of leaving it on the table near him, and I just picked one of the weirder but he and a lot of people have some petty stuff that causes them great offense. With the examples I gave on GP, my point was not that people endured hardships, but that people who offended societies sensibilities were harshly punished. If you think that society that got so offended by stuff like blasphemy, sexual preferences, and failing to follow caste systems or even other weird social customs, are more courageous or have a tougher skin, then we have a different definition of courage. And I say this without making a moral judgement, maybe severe punishment from deviancy served as a societal glue that allowed to thrive despite the material hardships, or perhaps a case can be made on the pathological aspect of having real hardships and still devoting so much time on irrelevant stuff. Still my point is that I don't think people got any less offended than nowdays, and perhaps watching today's punishments on the offenders, maybe that's one indicator where we are getting better.