11 ms·

What bothers me is the speed with which this process - "accused -> convinced -> executed" happens. We are not discussing things anymore. Today, you could tweet

What bothers me is the speed with which this process - "accused -> convinced -> executed" happens. We are not discussing things anymore. Today, you could tweet any accusations, and, no matter how ridiculous they look at first, it will lead to a race of who is taking them most seriously. Something definitely is broken. Look at what happened to the "okay". 4chan forced that meme 5 years ago in what they thought is a mischievous parody of ridiculousness of the cancel culture, and recently I watched CNL where the audience gasped in disbelief when one of the sketches included "o"-word. 5 years only, and most common (almost used "o"-word, sorry) sign became a synonym of hatred and racism. And now, Dr. Seuss. What's next, someone will tweet the act of breathing is racist? Do you really think it's impossible?

vmception 6y ago
Yeah I was sad about that guy at a theme park that got fired for making an OK sign in a family's photo. Its like everyone forgot about the circle game, "the game", and went straight for white supremacy racist. I wanted to write in or call in, but it was too late. This one is crazy, but I have my own causes and that ain't one of them! I find it peculiar and I'm aware "they are coming for the trade unionists next" but I think I can navigate this reality and stay out of the re-education camps.
- themolecularman 6y ago
  > I find it peculiar and I'm aware "they are coming for the trade unionists next" but I think I can navigate this reality and stay out of the re-education camps. How? I think they'll get to you next. As commenters above pointed out, there is a "long march" through institutions before it starts trickling down.
  - vmception 6y ago
    a lot of people took the transfer agreement instead of tying their identity to their birth country. don't be like the ones that were married to their country, they got vanned and banned. There were plenty of solutions to navigate before the .... last one. I think the parallels will hold pretty well this go-around, easily navigable options.
retox 6y ago
For some 'fun' just search for 'is x racist'. What o-word are you referring to, ordinary? ok? https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/air-pollution-racial-disparities/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/air-pollutio...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- xahrepap 6y ago
  I assumed "oriental"?
  - retox 6y ago
    Makes perfect sense, thanks. I don't remember the last time I heard anyone say that so it didn't come to mind.
    - carrolldunham 6y ago
      no, the poster was still talking about "okay". they were doing a joke by calling it the o-word because the hand gesture is a hate symbol now
      - xahrepap 6y ago
        Ooohhh. That makes sense. :) Thanks for explaining it.
      - almost_usual 6y ago
        I never use the “okay” hand gesture, I had no idea it was controversial now.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - SilverRed 6y ago
replwoacause 6y ago
>We are not discussing things anymore. Sure we are. There has been discussion. Just because you weren't involved in it, which is natural since I doubt you work for Dr. Seuss Enterprises, doesn't mean it didn't take place. The onus is on them to protect Dr. Seuss' legacy and it is important to change with the times. This is not the first time something like this has happened and it won't be the last. There are plenty of examples to be found online of popular family cartoons which depicted racial stereotypes. Go check out the Anti-black imagery in the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia and see if you think, by following the same logic you displayed in your comment, this stuff should still be allowed while keeping in mind it was mainstream acceptable during its time. https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/cartoons/ https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/cartoons/
- nerdponx 6y ago
  If you can sell Nazi memorabilia on Ebay, you should be able to sell a Dr. Seuss book that happens to contain an offensive stereotype on Ebay.
  - sheepdestroyer 6y ago
    In fact, in many countries it's illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia. Good if you ask me.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
      > Good if you ask me. Why, exactly? I wouldn't buy any such a thing, but I know several institutions that have good reasons to. People in general have some obsession with the Nazi and the last war. As if WWI never happened, and great wars before it. Because of this obsession, many people seem to think that the cause of a future war would be a kind of Nazism, completely disregarding the fact that it wasn't the cause of WWI and other earlier wars. Paradoxically, they also seem to forget what were the actual reasons of the rise of Nazism in post-WWI Germany (huge WWI retributions, enormous inflation and omnipresent poverty - basically people were very unhappy, and this very unhappiness was abused by Hitler; the ideology came afterwards).
ForHackernews 6y ago
Your language seems needlessly hyperbolic to me. A handful of fairly obscure Dr. Seuss books are going to be harder to buy. It's not like Cat in the Hat is #cancelled or anything. This is an "execution"? Maybe try using language proportionate to the offence here.
notJim 6y ago
That's not what happened. This decision has actually been in the works for a while and involved a lot of discussion. > The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company, which was founded by Seuss’ family, told AP https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-dr-seuss-books-racist-imagery-20210302-qr7ohmedtzcltarf4dl76qw5ee-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-dr-... eBay has an existing policy that removes racist materials. They're just applying it based on the Seuss info. > Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/offensive-material-policy?id=4324 https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite...
- ipsum2 6y ago
  As someone mentioned above, Mein Kampf is still allowed: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=mein+kampf&_sacat=0 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...
  - ojnabieoot 6y ago
    This is misleading and approaching a lie. eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay. From one of the listed items: > This item has been listed previously. eBay removed it with this reminder of the guidelines: > "You listed the book Mein Kampf, but it is not a critically annotated edition. eBay only allows critically annotated versions of Mein Kampf to be listed on the site. While we appreciate that you chose to utilize our site, we must ask that you please not relist in this case." > This is their policy and this edition is compliant with that policy.
    - ipsum2 6y ago
      > eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars That's a good point. I didn't realize they were annotated by modern scholars.
pron 6y ago
There have been no accusations, no one has been executed, and if you see which books have been pulled and why, you'll see that the matter is pretty reasonable, far from ridiculous and almost obvious. It is you who are taking things out of proportion with this War on Christmas nonsense.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  > no one has been executed I think they mean execution of a sentence/task, not of a person.
cyounkins 6y ago
I'm a little confused. Are you actually referring to the word "okay"? What is CNL?
- djsbak 6y ago
  He is. “Okay” is now considered racist. It’s super pernicious too, but effective bludgeon. Making “Okay” racist is obscure enough that most normal people (ie those not obsessed with wokeness) have never heard of it. Consider that you’ve never heard until now that “okay” is racist and you did the okay symbol in front of a political commissar (I mean a woke person, can’t keep up) that doesn’t like you. You’re done.
  - DebtDeflation 6y ago
    It's particularly irksome. There was never any history of "racism" behind the okay gesture and it was a very widely used gesture for decades. It was also a very versatile one - it could mean "everything's okay" in the traditional sense, "yeah, ok, whatever" in a dismissive sense, or turned upside down became the Circle Game where if you were tricked into looking at it you had to immediately break the circle with your index finger or accept a punch to the arm. Then some neckbeards on 4Chan decided to prank people by claiming it was a "white power symbol". Unfortunately, some alt right edgelords then started actually using it as such. Now we find ourselves in the situation you just described where not everyone is aware of this history and people who grew up with it as an innocent symbol use it and find themselves on the wrong end of a Twitter mob.
    - tired-dev 6y ago
      You're drawing a distinction between the "4chan neckbeards" and the "alt-right edgelords" that I don't think meaningfully exists. ("Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company", after all.) They were very much the same group; the "prank" could only lead to two outcomes, both of which were desired by the "pranksters". 1, they could successfully co-opt the symbol and permanently associate it with their ideology (symbols are arbitrary, after all, and how many mass shooters have to flash one before people connect the dots?). 2, they could troll with it enough that some would then see the symbol as an alt-right dogwhistle and decry it, only for them to turn around and say "haha! see those libtards? they're even offended by the OK symbol!".
gnicholas 6y ago
I wouldn’t normally correct a typo, but do you mean “convicted” instead of “convinced”?
- nph5667 6y ago
  You are right, thank you.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
o_v_o 6y ago
It's 6 of Dr. Seuss's books, and ones that most people haven't heard of. If you actually look at the content of the books, they are clearly racist and demeaning to those they make caricatures of. And in any case, it was not a sudden "canceling" or anything approaching that. Seuss's estate, managed by his family, made the decision after much deliberation to cease the publication of only six books due to the content. You could even see it as an anti-cancellation - Seuss's family wants to avoid him being associated with the obviously racist content of some of his work.
- tayo42 6y ago
  You'd think people would be tired of being unnecessarily outraged by everything by now?
  - amznthrwaway 6y ago
    Republicans and other right-wing racists will never stop being outraged, and they will never stop mistaking dumb slippery slope logical fallacies for good arguments. There’s nothing you can do except deplatform them; but HN is explicitly designed as a safe space for far right wing bigots; so this is guaranteed to be a bad discussion. Daniel Gackle has devoted much of his adult life to ensuring that extremists and racists feel safe here in HN; and that minorities do not. He likes to pretend this isn’t the case, but he only talks to very specific people for feedback, ensuring that he can always pretend that people like me are wrong. He’s a closed-minded, bigot-supporting pile of shit who spends every day of his life making the world actively worse for minorities.
  - tired-dev 6y ago
    You mean like being outraged that people are outraged?
  - tclancy 6y ago
    Look at the pictures in the relevant books and ask yourself if you would want a Black child to see themselves in those images. Ask yourself if Dr Seuss would. No one is outraged, the world just moves on.
hntrader 6y ago
The speed is part of the point. What better way to signal that you're part of the woke agenda than to be one of the first movers only a few days after the publisher made their announcement? It's like all the sycophants tripping over themselves to be the first to compliment their dear leader.
foofoo4u 6y ago
Link to support your statement. San Jose State University bans the "okay" symbol https://sjsunews.com/article/sjsu-bans-spartan-up-gesture-for-resembling-a-white-power-hand-gesture https://sjsunews.com/article/sjsu-bans-spartan-up-gesture-fo.... It was a symbol used for decades. Now, overnight, it is something that can get a student suspended.
- timcederman 6y ago
  "Overnight". Swastikas and salutes become appropriated by the Nazis, and suddenly the pledge of allegiance in America became a hand over heart, instead of the Bellamy salute. Do you think that was wrong too?
moonchild 6y ago
> audience gasped in disbelief when one of the sketches included "o"-word Sorry, what ‘o’ word? I'm seriously asking.
- christophilus 6y ago
  Oprah
someonehere 6y ago
You just said it right there. It’s the speed of social media that does this. Call me crazy, but haven’t we seen social media being manipulated (bots) to push narratives? These accusations or problems crop up fairly quick and then the media gets on it and then whoever/whatever is destroyed. If social media can be manipulated to swing stock markets or elections, then isn’t it possible it can swing to push narratives or keep us constantly fighting ourselves?

vmception 6y ago

Yeah I was sad about that guy at a theme park that got fired for making an OK sign in a family's photo. Its like everyone forgot about the circle game, "the game", and went straight for white supremacy racist. I wanted to write in or call in, but it was too late. This one is crazy, but I have my own causes and that ain't one of them! I find it peculiar and I'm aware "they are coming for the trade unionists next" but I think I can navigate this reality and stay out of the re-education camps.

themolecularman 6y ago
> I find it peculiar and I'm aware "they are coming for the trade unionists next" but I think I can navigate this reality and stay out of the re-education camps. How? I think they'll get to you next. As commenters above pointed out, there is a "long march" through institutions before it starts trickling down.
- vmception 6y ago
  a lot of people took the transfer agreement instead of tying their identity to their birth country. don't be like the ones that were married to their country, they got vanned and banned. There were plenty of solutions to navigate before the .... last one. I think the parallels will hold pretty well this go-around, easily navigable options.

retox 6y ago

For some 'fun' just search for 'is x racist'. What o-word are you referring to, ordinary? ok? https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/air-pollution-racial-disparities/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/air-pollutio...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xahrepap 6y ago
I assumed "oriental"?
- retox 6y ago
  Makes perfect sense, thanks. I don't remember the last time I heard anyone say that so it didn't come to mind.
  - carrolldunham 6y ago
    no, the poster was still talking about "okay". they were doing a joke by calling it the o-word because the hand gesture is a hate symbol now
    - xahrepap 6y ago
      Ooohhh. That makes sense. :) Thanks for explaining it.
    - almost_usual 6y ago
      I never use the “okay” hand gesture, I had no idea it was controversial now.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - SilverRed 6y ago

replwoacause 6y ago

>We are not discussing things anymore. Sure we are. There has been discussion. Just because you weren't involved in it, which is natural since I doubt you work for Dr. Seuss Enterprises, doesn't mean it didn't take place. The onus is on them to protect Dr. Seuss' legacy and it is important to change with the times. This is not the first time something like this has happened and it won't be the last. There are plenty of examples to be found online of popular family cartoons which depicted racial stereotypes. Go check out the Anti-black imagery in the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia and see if you think, by following the same logic you displayed in your comment, this stuff should still be allowed while keeping in mind it was mainstream acceptable during its time. https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/cartoons/ https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/cartoons/

nerdponx 6y ago
If you can sell Nazi memorabilia on Ebay, you should be able to sell a Dr. Seuss book that happens to contain an offensive stereotype on Ebay.
- sheepdestroyer 6y ago
  In fact, in many countries it's illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia. Good if you ask me.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
    > Good if you ask me. Why, exactly? I wouldn't buy any such a thing, but I know several institutions that have good reasons to. People in general have some obsession with the Nazi and the last war. As if WWI never happened, and great wars before it. Because of this obsession, many people seem to think that the cause of a future war would be a kind of Nazism, completely disregarding the fact that it wasn't the cause of WWI and other earlier wars. Paradoxically, they also seem to forget what were the actual reasons of the rise of Nazism in post-WWI Germany (huge WWI retributions, enormous inflation and omnipresent poverty - basically people were very unhappy, and this very unhappiness was abused by Hitler; the ideology came afterwards).

ForHackernews 6y ago

Your language seems needlessly hyperbolic to me. A handful of fairly obscure Dr. Seuss books are going to be harder to buy. It's not like Cat in the Hat is #cancelled or anything. This is an "execution"? Maybe try using language proportionate to the offence here.

notJim 6y ago

That's not what happened. This decision has actually been in the works for a while and involved a lot of discussion. > The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company, which was founded by Seuss’ family, told AP https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-dr-seuss-books-racist-imagery-20210302-qr7ohmedtzcltarf4dl76qw5ee-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-dr-... eBay has an existing policy that removes racist materials. They're just applying it based on the Seuss info. > Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/offensive-material-policy?id=4324 https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite...

ipsum2 6y ago
As someone mentioned above, Mein Kampf is still allowed: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=mein+kampf&_sacat=0 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  This is misleading and approaching a lie. eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay. From one of the listed items: > This item has been listed previously. eBay removed it with this reminder of the guidelines: > "You listed the book Mein Kampf, but it is not a critically annotated edition. eBay only allows critically annotated versions of Mein Kampf to be listed on the site. While we appreciate that you chose to utilize our site, we must ask that you please not relist in this case." > This is their policy and this edition is compliant with that policy.
  - ipsum2 6y ago
    > eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars That's a good point. I didn't realize they were annotated by modern scholars.

pron 6y ago

There have been no accusations, no one has been executed, and if you see which books have been pulled and why, you'll see that the matter is pretty reasonable, far from ridiculous and almost obvious. It is you who are taking things out of proportion with this War on Christmas nonsense.

guerrilla 6y ago
> no one has been executed I think they mean execution of a sentence/task, not of a person.

cyounkins 6y ago

I'm a little confused. Are you actually referring to the word "okay"? What is CNL?

djsbak 6y ago
He is. “Okay” is now considered racist. It’s super pernicious too, but effective bludgeon. Making “Okay” racist is obscure enough that most normal people (ie those not obsessed with wokeness) have never heard of it. Consider that you’ve never heard until now that “okay” is racist and you did the okay symbol in front of a political commissar (I mean a woke person, can’t keep up) that doesn’t like you. You’re done.
- DebtDeflation 6y ago
  It's particularly irksome. There was never any history of "racism" behind the okay gesture and it was a very widely used gesture for decades. It was also a very versatile one - it could mean "everything's okay" in the traditional sense, "yeah, ok, whatever" in a dismissive sense, or turned upside down became the Circle Game where if you were tricked into looking at it you had to immediately break the circle with your index finger or accept a punch to the arm. Then some neckbeards on 4Chan decided to prank people by claiming it was a "white power symbol". Unfortunately, some alt right edgelords then started actually using it as such. Now we find ourselves in the situation you just described where not everyone is aware of this history and people who grew up with it as an innocent symbol use it and find themselves on the wrong end of a Twitter mob.
  - tired-dev 6y ago
    You're drawing a distinction between the "4chan neckbeards" and the "alt-right edgelords" that I don't think meaningfully exists. ("Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company", after all.) They were very much the same group; the "prank" could only lead to two outcomes, both of which were desired by the "pranksters". 1, they could successfully co-opt the symbol and permanently associate it with their ideology (symbols are arbitrary, after all, and how many mass shooters have to flash one before people connect the dots?). 2, they could troll with it enough that some would then see the symbol as an alt-right dogwhistle and decry it, only for them to turn around and say "haha! see those libtards? they're even offended by the OK symbol!".

gnicholas 6y ago

I wouldn’t normally correct a typo, but do you mean “convicted” instead of “convinced”?

nph5667 6y ago
You are right, thank you.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

o_v_o 6y ago

It's 6 of Dr. Seuss's books, and ones that most people haven't heard of. If you actually look at the content of the books, they are clearly racist and demeaning to those they make caricatures of. And in any case, it was not a sudden "canceling" or anything approaching that. Seuss's estate, managed by his family, made the decision after much deliberation to cease the publication of only six books due to the content. You could even see it as an anti-cancellation - Seuss's family wants to avoid him being associated with the obviously racist content of some of his work.

tayo42 6y ago
You'd think people would be tired of being unnecessarily outraged by everything by now?
- amznthrwaway 6y ago
  Republicans and other right-wing racists will never stop being outraged, and they will never stop mistaking dumb slippery slope logical fallacies for good arguments. There’s nothing you can do except deplatform them; but HN is explicitly designed as a safe space for far right wing bigots; so this is guaranteed to be a bad discussion. Daniel Gackle has devoted much of his adult life to ensuring that extremists and racists feel safe here in HN; and that minorities do not. He likes to pretend this isn’t the case, but he only talks to very specific people for feedback, ensuring that he can always pretend that people like me are wrong. He’s a closed-minded, bigot-supporting pile of shit who spends every day of his life making the world actively worse for minorities.
- tired-dev 6y ago
  You mean like being outraged that people are outraged?
- tclancy 6y ago
  Look at the pictures in the relevant books and ask yourself if you would want a Black child to see themselves in those images. Ask yourself if Dr Seuss would. No one is outraged, the world just moves on.

hntrader 6y ago

The speed is part of the point. What better way to signal that you're part of the woke agenda than to be one of the first movers only a few days after the publisher made their announcement? It's like all the sycophants tripping over themselves to be the first to compliment their dear leader.

foofoo4u 6y ago

Link to support your statement. San Jose State University bans the "okay" symbol https://sjsunews.com/article/sjsu-bans-spartan-up-gesture-for-resembling-a-white-power-hand-gesture https://sjsunews.com/article/sjsu-bans-spartan-up-gesture-fo.... It was a symbol used for decades. Now, overnight, it is something that can get a student suspended.

timcederman 6y ago
"Overnight". Swastikas and salutes become appropriated by the Nazis, and suddenly the pledge of allegiance in America became a hand over heart, instead of the Bellamy salute. Do you think that was wrong too?

moonchild 6y ago

> audience gasped in disbelief when one of the sketches included "o"-word Sorry, what ‘o’ word? I'm seriously asking.

christophilus 6y ago
Oprah

someonehere 6y ago

You just said it right there. It’s the speed of social media that does this. Call me crazy, but haven’t we seen social media being manipulated (bots) to push narratives? These accusations or problems crop up fairly quick and then the media gets on it and then whoever/whatever is destroyed. If social media can be manipulated to swing stock markets or elections, then isn’t it possible it can swing to push narratives or keep us constantly fighting ourselves?