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> events on the currently hot social justice topics. Namespace collision detected: 1. a lecture series or seminar by a researcher specializing in social justi

> events on the currently hot social justice topics. Namespace collision detected: 1. a lecture series or seminar by a researcher specializing in social justice movements, civil rights leaders, abolitionists, etc. Possibly focusing on insights from newly discovered primary documents. 2. events hosted by any political college organization whose participants may be painted with the derisive term "social justice warrior" Definition #1 isn't an edge case-- most universities are chock full of such events and seminars. Shit like this: a linguist who was tasked with helping a Northern California tribe fill in the blanks in the documentation of their dead language so they could revive it. If your curiosity isn't peaked by that concept and it's associated practical challenges and sets of choices, I'm not sure what you're doing on HN. Definition #2 is like HN's version of cheating celebrity stories in the Enquirer. If you wanted to spend the rest of your life enumerating each case, you certainly wouldn't run out of bona fide material. But if all you talk about 99% of the time is that-- to the extent that you forget definition #1 even exists-- you have to admit at least part of your outrage is due not to your own free will but due to people clicking upvote buttons as if nudging trays of junk food close to where you're sitting. Edit: typo

skindoe 6y ago
> a lecture series or seminar by a researcher specializing in social justice movements, civil rights leaders, abolitionists, etc. Possibly focusing on insights from newly discovered primary documents. "Newly discovered primary documents" something makes me doubt that this is what the professors are looking into...
laretluval 6y ago
Which of those do you think is more likely to draw a large audience? That's the one that will be more common.
- jancsika 6y ago
  Quick digression followed by rank speculation, but I think it will be useful-- What draws the largest general audience at colleges are sports. It would be reasonable if many HN posters wanted to critique college sports fans for diverting funds and energy from more important scholarly pursuits. It would be reasonable, if a bit odd, for them to do this by sarcastically nicknaming college sports fans, "Einsteins." It would be understandable if HN posters extended the sarcastic nickname "Einstein" to other domains to target people who ruin that domain by spamming it with superficial, loud-mouthed, low-effort pursuits. It would not be reasonable, understandable nor healthy if a critical mass of HN posters did this without knowing a) who Einstein is, b) the obvious fact that the nickname is being used sarcastically, and c) an entire department in every major college is concerned with an intellectual pursuit of extending the work that Einstein started. After all, hackers are supposed to understand the systems they hack! Anyway, if this were the case then anyone with even a passing interest in impugning the reputation of Einstein himself could then leverage that ignorance to do so. It's my rank speculation that "social justice" to a critical mass of HN'ers has become something of a backformation from "social justice warrior." E.g., an ignorant lurker reads a snippet about some historical figure from a social justice movement (or just a topic tangentially related to a social justice movement from the past), feels outrage over the superficiality and arrogance of SJW's, and unconsciously applies those same feels to whatever the conversation happens to be about. This happens all the time with memes-- e.g., Tim and Eric make a convincing "Free Real Estate" infomercial parody, parody becomes a meme, Tim shows up in a film, and Redditors mock him: "Hey, it's that Free Real Estate huckster guy!"
crb002 6y ago
#3, which is close to #2 - vigilantism. It's ugly and leftists on campus have embraced it.

skindoe 6y ago

> a lecture series or seminar by a researcher specializing in social justice movements, civil rights leaders, abolitionists, etc. Possibly focusing on insights from newly discovered primary documents. "Newly discovered primary documents" something makes me doubt that this is what the professors are looking into...

laretluval 6y ago

Which of those do you think is more likely to draw a large audience? That's the one that will be more common.

jancsika 6y ago
Quick digression followed by rank speculation, but I think it will be useful-- What draws the largest general audience at colleges are sports. It would be reasonable if many HN posters wanted to critique college sports fans for diverting funds and energy from more important scholarly pursuits. It would be reasonable, if a bit odd, for them to do this by sarcastically nicknaming college sports fans, "Einsteins." It would be understandable if HN posters extended the sarcastic nickname "Einstein" to other domains to target people who ruin that domain by spamming it with superficial, loud-mouthed, low-effort pursuits. It would not be reasonable, understandable nor healthy if a critical mass of HN posters did this without knowing a) who Einstein is, b) the obvious fact that the nickname is being used sarcastically, and c) an entire department in every major college is concerned with an intellectual pursuit of extending the work that Einstein started. After all, hackers are supposed to understand the systems they hack! Anyway, if this were the case then anyone with even a passing interest in impugning the reputation of Einstein himself could then leverage that ignorance to do so. It's my rank speculation that "social justice" to a critical mass of HN'ers has become something of a backformation from "social justice warrior." E.g., an ignorant lurker reads a snippet about some historical figure from a social justice movement (or just a topic tangentially related to a social justice movement from the past), feels outrage over the superficiality and arrogance of SJW's, and unconsciously applies those same feels to whatever the conversation happens to be about. This happens all the time with memes-- e.g., Tim and Eric make a convincing "Free Real Estate" infomercial parody, parody becomes a meme, Tim shows up in a film, and Redditors mock him: "Hey, it's that Free Real Estate huckster guy!"

crb002 6y ago

#3, which is close to #2 - vigilantism. It's ugly and leftists on campus have embraced it.