5 ms·

I think, being offended at words is mostly a sign of one's own personal insecurity. Can you imagine a successful doctor or a business owner being seriously offe

I think, being offended at words is mostly a sign of one's own personal insecurity. Can you imagine a successful doctor or a business owner being seriously offended because someone on the Internet called them a bad word? I bet they would respond same way I do when my son calls me a "bad papa" for insisting he finishes lunch before getting a desert. The bigger, much bigger problem is the growing amount of people that feel financially insecure about their lives, have no marketable skills, and plenty of free time. And the media is currently doing its best to direct their rage to unresolvable tribal infighting, rather than self-improvement, and possibly concluding that their misery might have something to do with the rise of monopolies, poorly chosen loan-funded degrees, and a few other very specific things rather than abstract inequality and injustice. I don't like where this is headed. Tribal society structure, with elites living in fenced mansions, and hungry plebs literally killing each other over petty tribal disputes is very real. Half of Africa lives like this, Mexican drug cartels do, most Europe did before Enlightenment. And it is mind-boggling to see that this type of society might be coming to the former First World in fewer than a single generation.

pjc50 6y ago
> Can you imagine a successful doctor or a business owner being seriously offended because someone on the Internet called them a bad word? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Chiropractic_Association_v_Singh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Chiropractic_Associati... : a journalist questioning some of the "alternative medicine" claims of chiropractors got them so offended they tried to sue him into silence. https://nypost.com/2019/12/31/alex-jones-to-pay-100k-in-sandy-hook-case-for-defamatory-lies/ https://nypost.com/2019/12/31/alex-jones-to-pay-100k-in-sand... : as a father, would you describe the fathers of the Sandy Hook victims as "insecure"?
- john_moscow 6y ago
  I think, it would be fair to distinguish actually being offended, vs. using it to get a tangible financial gain. To answer your last question, as a father I wouldn't be offended by someone spreading misinformation. I wouldn't try to police random 4channers talking whatever they want. But I would consider it just morally wrong for someone to profit from spreading it and, I would use the legal system to stop them, if it makes any sense.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    > distinguish actually being offended ... how? (There's the "reasonable person would find this offensive" test, which appears in various places, but libel is specifically about reputational injury)
- dlkf 6y ago
  OP said "successful doctor", it's unclear how chiropractors are relevant.
  - yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
    Quacks can be wildly successful too.
    - idle_zealot 6y ago
      It's the "doctor" part that's missing.
  - nybble41 6y ago
    OP also said "or a business owner". The "alternative medicine" types may not be credible doctors but at least some of them do know how to run a successful business. (And just to be fair, some chiropractors are proper doctors specializing in musculoskeletal issues and not trying to push chiropractic treatments as cure-all alternatives to mainstream medicine. As they say, it's the 99% that give the 1% a bad name….)
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
The bigger, much bigger problem is that free speech is always managed speech. A quick stroll around the Internet shows that virtually no one has any truly original political insights, and those that do are more likely to be sidelined than praised. So where is the freedom in repeating tropes put together by media professionals for cut-and-paste public consumption? Just $10m a year will buy you an effective social media troll farm or an operation to rival QAnon. It's super-cheap, and - if you're that way inclined - super-effective. Real free speech wouldn't be battery farmed like this. But it would mean getting rid of any number of giant corporations, so it's unlikely to happen any time soon.
yarrel 6y ago
Yes, yes, people are such snowflakes now, who would have been offended by for example being called a communist or gay in America in the 1950s? There is absolutely a dynamic of status anxiety to some of this, but to claim that this is all that is happening amounts to asking some people to be bad bayesians. So yes I don't want tribal society. But you can't privatise the public problem of people who are organizing to actually physically harm you, where they are, as a personal moral failing of being insufficiently stoic. Political action rather than spiritual retreat is needed.
dalbasal 6y ago
There are definitely cases where speech can be harmful. It can affect people's livelihoods, personal lives... Rumours can (and have, many times) lead to actual dangerous events, from the blood libel pogroms to pizzagate. Bad information about covid can (and are) leading to deaths. etc. In wartime, there is a reason belligerents use propaganda. If effective, it can literally weaken a nation. Freedom of speech is important, despite the dangers. In terms of political freedoms, danger & importance often go together. I don't think we should diminish the power of speech, and therefore its danger. As to abstract justice... This has been a major societal and political concern since the literal beginning of history. That is, for as long as there has been writing (that survives), there have been such issues. Ancient law codes, religious texts and such are full of it. It's part of who we are.
watwut 6y ago
> Can you imagine a successful doctor or a business owner being seriously offended because someone on the Internet called them a bad word? Yes. Do you know any doctors or business owners? Cause both are often reacting quickly on what was said. Always did. Quickly and severly reacting to offense and retaliating even used to be part of manhood. Not that it was good thing, it is good that guys dont duel over what was said. But acting like offense is new concept is ridiculous.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  I am a business owner myself. And I can attest to the fact that the most precious resource in my life is time. I spend most of my time working hard to make money, and I spend the rest of it spending some of that money doing things I really enjoy. I absolutely can't imagine wasting time getting outraged about what somebody said on social media, when I could spend it cooking some great recipes with my wife, or taking kids to a boat trip, or replaying a classic computer game. Most people getting outraged really don't have anything better to do.

pjc50 6y ago

> Can you imagine a successful doctor or a business owner being seriously offended because someone on the Internet called them a bad word? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Chiropractic_Association_v_Singh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Chiropractic_Associati... : a journalist questioning some of the "alternative medicine" claims of chiropractors got them so offended they tried to sue him into silence. https://nypost.com/2019/12/31/alex-jones-to-pay-100k-in-sandy-hook-case-for-defamatory-lies/ https://nypost.com/2019/12/31/alex-jones-to-pay-100k-in-sand... : as a father, would you describe the fathers of the Sandy Hook victims as "insecure"?

john_moscow 6y ago
I think, it would be fair to distinguish actually being offended, vs. using it to get a tangible financial gain. To answer your last question, as a father I wouldn't be offended by someone spreading misinformation. I wouldn't try to police random 4channers talking whatever they want. But I would consider it just morally wrong for someone to profit from spreading it and, I would use the legal system to stop them, if it makes any sense.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > distinguish actually being offended ... how? (There's the "reasonable person would find this offensive" test, which appears in various places, but libel is specifically about reputational injury)
dlkf 6y ago
OP said "successful doctor", it's unclear how chiropractors are relevant.
- yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
  Quacks can be wildly successful too.
  - idle_zealot 6y ago
    It's the "doctor" part that's missing.
- nybble41 6y ago
  OP also said "or a business owner". The "alternative medicine" types may not be credible doctors but at least some of them do know how to run a successful business. (And just to be fair, some chiropractors are proper doctors specializing in musculoskeletal issues and not trying to push chiropractic treatments as cure-all alternatives to mainstream medicine. As they say, it's the 99% that give the 1% a bad name….)

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

The bigger, much bigger problem is that free speech is always managed speech. A quick stroll around the Internet shows that virtually no one has any truly original political insights, and those that do are more likely to be sidelined than praised. So where is the freedom in repeating tropes put together by media professionals for cut-and-paste public consumption? Just $10m a year will buy you an effective social media troll farm or an operation to rival QAnon. It's super-cheap, and - if you're that way inclined - super-effective. Real free speech wouldn't be battery farmed like this. But it would mean getting rid of any number of giant corporations, so it's unlikely to happen any time soon.

yarrel 6y ago

Yes, yes, people are such snowflakes now, who would have been offended by for example being called a communist or gay in America in the 1950s? There is absolutely a dynamic of status anxiety to some of this, but to claim that this is all that is happening amounts to asking some people to be bad bayesians. So yes I don't want tribal society. But you can't privatise the public problem of people who are organizing to actually physically harm you, where they are, as a personal moral failing of being insufficiently stoic. Political action rather than spiritual retreat is needed.

dalbasal 6y ago

There are definitely cases where speech can be harmful. It can affect people's livelihoods, personal lives... Rumours can (and have, many times) lead to actual dangerous events, from the blood libel pogroms to pizzagate. Bad information about covid can (and are) leading to deaths. etc. In wartime, there is a reason belligerents use propaganda. If effective, it can literally weaken a nation. Freedom of speech is important, despite the dangers. In terms of political freedoms, danger & importance often go together. I don't think we should diminish the power of speech, and therefore its danger. As to abstract justice... This has been a major societal and political concern since the literal beginning of history. That is, for as long as there has been writing (that survives), there have been such issues. Ancient law codes, religious texts and such are full of it. It's part of who we are.

watwut 6y ago

> Can you imagine a successful doctor or a business owner being seriously offended because someone on the Internet called them a bad word? Yes. Do you know any doctors or business owners? Cause both are often reacting quickly on what was said. Always did. Quickly and severly reacting to offense and retaliating even used to be part of manhood. Not that it was good thing, it is good that guys dont duel over what was said. But acting like offense is new concept is ridiculous.

john_moscow 6y ago
I am a business owner myself. And I can attest to the fact that the most precious resource in my life is time. I spend most of my time working hard to make money, and I spend the rest of it spending some of that money doing things I really enjoy. I absolutely can't imagine wasting time getting outraged about what somebody said on social media, when I could spend it cooking some great recipes with my wife, or taking kids to a boat trip, or replaying a classic computer game. Most people getting outraged really don't have anything better to do.