4 ms·

Do you think essays like "A Modest Proposal" are likely to be misunderstood?

chrisseaton 6y ago
I've literally seen people use the term 'modest proposal' in a non-satirical way missing the point. Also see how Jean Carroll has been described as a misandrist when she invoked the same phrase. And also see the difficulty that the 'abolish the police' movement have gotten into explaining that they don't literally mean abolish, especially since some of them do literally mean that, so you get really stuck trying to explain you were trying to make a point, but yes those other people other there who used exactly the same words as you did mean it literally but that wasn't quite what you meant you were using it for terseness... etc. Why give yourself this problem? Seems a really bad tool to try to use for anything. Be straightforward with your communication. Don't give people an opening to attack you for no other reason than trying to be whimsical in your writing.
- pas 6y ago
  ... some people do really support abolishing the police. And those people are also likely to go and protest. Sure, the bigger moderate masses picked up the slogan, but it started with that radical message. Plus on a realpolitik level it doesn't really matter what the slogan is. Really. See how tha ACA was turned into Obamacare and death panels. Yes, independents initially might be confused, yes a dumb slogan doesn't help, but fundamentally if the political and social will is there, the slogan does not really matter.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- aestetix 6y ago
  And some people called Noam Chomsky a holocaust denier because some nutjob put an essay of Chomsky's in his book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair Just because a few people are too dense to understand context doesn't mean we should restructure what we allow in society to accomodate them.
pas 6y ago
Comedians do shows, they have a persona, an act, and they do their bits embedded into a context. If someone just randomly shouts Nazi ideology into the void, especially at a time when that void is very ticklish, it's not unheard of that the void silences the shouter. (Is this good? No of course not, it's a very sad state of affairs that somehow constructive de-escalatory discourse is not incentivized on these platforms, and preaching to the choir, virtue signalling, trolling and so and so are.)

I've literally seen people use the term 'modest proposal' in a non-satirical way missing the point. Also see how Jean Carroll has been described as a misandrist when she invoked the same phrase. And also see the difficulty that the 'abolish the police' movement have gotten into explaining that they don't literally mean abolish, especially since some of them do literally mean that, so you get really stuck trying to explain you were trying to make a point, but yes those other people other there who used exactly the same words as you did mean it literally but that wasn't quite what you meant you were using it for terseness... etc. Why give yourself this problem? Seems a really bad tool to try to use for anything. Be straightforward with your communication. Don't give people an opening to attack you for no other reason than trying to be whimsical in your writing.

pas 6y ago
... some people do really support abolishing the police. And those people are also likely to go and protest. Sure, the bigger moderate masses picked up the slogan, but it started with that radical message. Plus on a realpolitik level it doesn't really matter what the slogan is. Really. See how tha ACA was turned into Obamacare and death panels. Yes, independents initially might be confused, yes a dumb slogan doesn't help, but fundamentally if the political and social will is there, the slogan does not really matter.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
aestetix 6y ago
And some people called Noam Chomsky a holocaust denier because some nutjob put an essay of Chomsky's in his book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair Just because a few people are too dense to understand context doesn't mean we should restructure what we allow in society to accomodate them.

pas 6y ago

Comedians do shows, they have a persona, an act, and they do their bits embedded into a context. If someone just randomly shouts Nazi ideology into the void, especially at a time when that void is very ticklish, it's not unheard of that the void silences the shouter. (Is this good? No of course not, it's a very sad state of affairs that somehow constructive de-escalatory discourse is not incentivized on these platforms, and preaching to the choir, virtue signalling, trolling and so and so are.)