4 ms·
Engaging in real-life political discussions in the current climate is basically all risk, zero reward.
by read_if_gay_ 5y ago
Engaging in real-life political discussions in the current climate is basically all risk, zero reward.
- yerwhat01010 5y agoOnly if you have "incorrect" opinions.
- ForHackernews 5y agoThere's not a lot of reward even for the bien pensant.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- secondcoming 5y agoAnd of course a 'correct' opinion today might be 'incorrect' tomorrow and since you've previously expressed the 'now incorrect' opinion you can be in trouble. Just delete your Twitter account and say nothing to anyone about anything, especially in the workplace.
- oblio 5y agoFrom what I remember, in polite circles it was always known that you should never discuss politics and religion with anyone except your immediate family and close friends.
- the-smug-one 5y ago"The Fall of Public Man" argues that we actually used to be more political and had to "put our cards on the table" so to speak. This would be as opposed to now, where we are very much able to hide our positions if we so please. I don't know what polite circles would be, but I suppose some sort of aristocracy? Certainly gentile society in 1780s in France were not scared of expressing heavy political discourse in public. Nor were the rich Romans. Edit: And just to be clear. Rich people may perhaps only speak politics with their closest friends, but they certainly act politically with the use of their capital. Imitating them by shutting up has no point and is detrimental to a democratic society.
- w0de0 5y agoThe polite society he refers to which originated this standard is the English gentry, with whom American political culture has much more in common than either the Latin aristocracies you mention or the Gallic working class. In America there is a tension between Jacksonian public man populism of the type you allude to and gentrified politesse of southern planters and northern merchants. In short, you’re both right.
- twic 5y agoIt's long been thought unwise to discuss politics with your family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair#/media/File:Caran-d-ache-dreyfus-supper.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair#/media/File:Car...
- read_if_gay_ 5y agoGetting fired off a couple tweets is unprecedented though.
- oblio 5y agoTweeting is like shouting from the rooftops. Twitter is a broadcast platform, is that so hard to realize?
- Loughla 5y agoHow? If I go to the town square and yell at crowds about how one race is superior to the others, I should expect some repercussions. Why is it different, now, just because it involves computers?
- read_if_gay_ 5y agoYou don’t even have to be shouting slurs. Donating to the wrong cause is enough.
- oblio 5y agoIt depends. If the "wrong cause" is one advocating for fewer rights for fellow humans, most reasonable humans feel hard to sympathize with the person complaining about it.
- read_if_gay_ 5y agoThat's true but finding it hard to sympathize with someone is different from taking matters into your own hands and getting people fired.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoAnd the Twitterverse is a kind of weird opposite: say whatever you want into the void, and not face any in-person repercussions. You can stop whenever you feel like you're losing, you can double down when you think you're winning. It's all a slight fluctuation in your dopamine levels, and you get addicted to it. You lose grip of what actual IRL discussions are like because they're tainted with your experiences of vituperatively arguing people halfway across the globe that you'll never meet.