4 ms·

Your intervention in the thread wasn't to argue that this girl shouldn't be deplatformed, it was to list apparently horrible instances of celebrities on the lef

Your intervention in the thread wasn't to argue that this girl shouldn't be deplatformed, it was to list apparently horrible instances of celebrities on the left threatening Republicans and getting away with it. I am surprised that your intended point was to say that those things all should be allowed, and so should this girl. It is deeply strange to me that you thought your original post would have conveyed this. Were you personally convinced by the strength of the article you linked that there is an epidemic of threatened violence against Republicans? I highlighted examples that I believed were being alleged to be threats. You did not clarify that you linked an article you thought was filled with nonsense examples but you wanted to talk about Kathy Griffith. Kathy Griffith seems like a stupid idiot. She did get "deplatformed" after the Trump thing, which appeared in a magazine. Most of her work since then has been talking about how she can't get booked anymore. She lost a bunch of work. This is all fairly well documented. You must know this, since you were aware enough of the wave of leftist celebrity violence incitement to have the link to the article on hand. Why did you pivot to saying I should engage more thoroughly with her case but leave out the details? But if we really want to unpack it, you've conceptually slipped from "threatening violence in a literal and direct way", which the 14 year old shithead definitely did, to "depicting violence" or "doing something everyone knows is a joke but that is arguably violent." Kathy Griffith's thing is a stupid tasteless stunt by a comedienne whose entire career is being stupid and tasteless. But I don't see even the slightest comparison between that and this. You also call attention to the "smother with a pillow" Larry Wilmore line. The "joke", such as it is -- Wilmore's show was terrible and so I am not surprised the joke was terrible too -- is that some far-right figures believed in a conspiracy that Antonin Scalia was smothered with a pillow. Antonin Scalia was not smothered with a pillow. It is difficult to argue that a joke about conspiracy theorists should be construed to otherwise be a dead serious threat. Should I take this to mean that you believe Antonin Scalia was smothered with a pillow? This might be off topic, but I think it's relevant as to your ability to adjudicate whether there is an epidemic of leftist incitement to violence against Republicans, which was your original argument, apparently in support of your position that no one should be banned for making direct and personalized death threats on social media.

leereeves 7y ago
That's a lot of tangents and my time is limited right now, so let's focus on Kathy Griffin. Yes, I heard she was deplatformed by some media outlets, but not by YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/user/officialkathygriffin https://www.youtube.com/user/officialkathygriffin So if YouTube now has a policy of deplatforming violence, I'd like to see it enforced fairly. That doesn't mean I necessarily approve of that policy, but that's not my decision and I can see that it's a reasonable policy, if enforced fairly. That will have to be all for now, I have other things to do, but if you'd like to continue I'll try to respond later.
- notafraudster 7y ago
  Okay, so first let it be noted that you linked a list of 15 bad examples and when I called them out you called me cherrypicking, then when I stopped cherrypicking your immediate response was "I don't have enough time to engage with all the examples". Jeez louise, you literally just asked for me to "open up tangents". I was satisfied summarizing your list as ridiculous garbage that made no sense. The reason we're still talking about it is because you wanted to. Okay, let's only talk about Kathy Griffith for some reason. The reason YouTube did not ban Kathy Griffith under rules for threatening violence is because: 1) The purported threatened violence was not threatened on YouTube, it was for a magazine. 2) The purported threatened violence was not a threat of violence, it was a depiction of violence. Those are not the same thing, but I'm totally fine with banning for the latter. You're the one that isn't fine with the thing you're arguing for. 3) The threat occurred at a time before YouTube put these rules in place. Updating your rules isn't being a hypocrite because you didn't time travel after doing so. It's also literally what the left has been asking for for years. But separate from that, your position was that the left didn't deplatform her, and unsurprisingly, it did. CNN, Home Of The Left Biased Anti Trump Fake News, fired her immediately. So great, it is agreed that celebrities face significant reputational consequence for doing things that aren't threatening violence but are adjacent and might be perceived as uncouth. Again, I need to stress that the person in the OP directly threatened violence. She didn't say "I hope the people who own YouTube get shot". She didn't say "If I was alone in a room with YouTube lady, I'd punch her in the face". She didn't do a music video of robot YouTube getting exploded. She did a direct and personal threat to murder a specific named individual. And you thought the really important aspect of this story was talking about Kathy Griffith. Let's recap the thread: You think that no one should be banned for threatening violence on YouTube. To support this argument, you link a bunch of people, some of whom were deplatformed, most of whom aren't threatening violence, and most of whom weren't doing the thing they're accused of on YouTube. You then insist I'm being uncharitable to the evidence by not taking more seriously the threats of violence, which again are mostly not threats, and again, you don't think we should take actual threats of violence seriously. You should advance the argument you actually believe in, not do a bizarre strawman devil's advocate where you say "I don't believe in banning people, but imagine if I did because I was a tyrannical anti-speech leftist, then I would be a hypocrite, because I wouldn't ban this anti-Trump celebrity, which makes me a hypocrite, checkmate".

leereeves 7y ago

That's a lot of tangents and my time is limited right now, so let's focus on Kathy Griffin. Yes, I heard she was deplatformed by some media outlets, but not by YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/user/officialkathygriffin https://www.youtube.com/user/officialkathygriffin So if YouTube now has a policy of deplatforming violence, I'd like to see it enforced fairly. That doesn't mean I necessarily approve of that policy, but that's not my decision and I can see that it's a reasonable policy, if enforced fairly. That will have to be all for now, I have other things to do, but if you'd like to continue I'll try to respond later.

notafraudster 7y ago
Okay, so first let it be noted that you linked a list of 15 bad examples and when I called them out you called me cherrypicking, then when I stopped cherrypicking your immediate response was "I don't have enough time to engage with all the examples". Jeez louise, you literally just asked for me to "open up tangents". I was satisfied summarizing your list as ridiculous garbage that made no sense. The reason we're still talking about it is because you wanted to. Okay, let's only talk about Kathy Griffith for some reason. The reason YouTube did not ban Kathy Griffith under rules for threatening violence is because: 1) The purported threatened violence was not threatened on YouTube, it was for a magazine. 2) The purported threatened violence was not a threat of violence, it was a depiction of violence. Those are not the same thing, but I'm totally fine with banning for the latter. You're the one that isn't fine with the thing you're arguing for. 3) The threat occurred at a time before YouTube put these rules in place. Updating your rules isn't being a hypocrite because you didn't time travel after doing so. It's also literally what the left has been asking for for years. But separate from that, your position was that the left didn't deplatform her, and unsurprisingly, it did. CNN, Home Of The Left Biased Anti Trump Fake News, fired her immediately. So great, it is agreed that celebrities face significant reputational consequence for doing things that aren't threatening violence but are adjacent and might be perceived as uncouth. Again, I need to stress that the person in the OP directly threatened violence. She didn't say "I hope the people who own YouTube get shot". She didn't say "If I was alone in a room with YouTube lady, I'd punch her in the face". She didn't do a music video of robot YouTube getting exploded. She did a direct and personal threat to murder a specific named individual. And you thought the really important aspect of this story was talking about Kathy Griffith. Let's recap the thread: You think that no one should be banned for threatening violence on YouTube. To support this argument, you link a bunch of people, some of whom were deplatformed, most of whom aren't threatening violence, and most of whom weren't doing the thing they're accused of on YouTube. You then insist I'm being uncharitable to the evidence by not taking more seriously the threats of violence, which again are mostly not threats, and again, you don't think we should take actual threats of violence seriously. You should advance the argument you actually believe in, not do a bizarre strawman devil's advocate where you say "I don't believe in banning people, but imagine if I did because I was a tyrannical anti-speech leftist, then I would be a hypocrite, because I wouldn't ban this anti-Trump celebrity, which makes me a hypocrite, checkmate".