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Right, the typical "why are you so upset" smug dismissal that seems to be the fallback when something doesn't have any merits, including casual insults or provo

Right, the typical "why are you so upset" smug dismissal that seems to be the fallback when something doesn't have any merits, including casual insults or provocation like "having angst"... But somehow it's still important to comment and mock, lest others might think he has a point. When I saw the article, I knew that MS Word has had something like this for a while. I thought is was stupid but not worth my "angst". But people taking the time to speak out against this silliness are doing something good, and casually dismissing and mocking their concerns, rather than taking part in the conversation for or against, or just not commenting, is basically cowardice.

caddemon 5y ago
My favorite part about the "why are you so upset" argument is that it almost always gets used against both sides in the "culture wars". I doubt anybody commenting on HN is frothing at the mouth, but given that we treat stating an opinion as being upset these days, literally everyone that has any opinion at all is upset over something trivial - because the whole fucking thing is stupid. Like sure I should be doing something better with my time than philosophizing about whether it is okay to delist a couple random Dr. Seuss books. It's true I never actually intended to buy them and would've never noticed otherwise. But hello somebody went through the effort to cancel them in the first place. Don't those people have something better to do than worry about whether one of the dated illustrations in a not particularly popular children's book is a little culturally insensitive? Google is the one that put a non-trivial amount of engineering hours into this feature. I can see ways in which it would be helpful, I can also see how it could be problematic. Regardless though, if we think about the big picture, Google is the one that could have meaningfully increased their impact by redirecting their efforts towards more serious problems. The time spent commenting on this issue on HN pales in comparison and I'm not sure how one could ask the "don't you have anything better to do?" question of commenters without asking it of Google. At least if their opinion truly is that this doesn't matter either way.
- BadCookie 5y ago
  I agree. The serious problems that need solving are things like police killing Black people unjustly and young gay people harming themselves because their parents don’t accept them. This excessive language policing is a distraction from the real problems in my opinion.

caddemon 5y ago

My favorite part about the "why are you so upset" argument is that it almost always gets used against both sides in the "culture wars". I doubt anybody commenting on HN is frothing at the mouth, but given that we treat stating an opinion as being upset these days, literally everyone that has any opinion at all is upset over something trivial - because the whole fucking thing is stupid. Like sure I should be doing something better with my time than philosophizing about whether it is okay to delist a couple random Dr. Seuss books. It's true I never actually intended to buy them and would've never noticed otherwise. But hello somebody went through the effort to cancel them in the first place. Don't those people have something better to do than worry about whether one of the dated illustrations in a not particularly popular children's book is a little culturally insensitive? Google is the one that put a non-trivial amount of engineering hours into this feature. I can see ways in which it would be helpful, I can also see how it could be problematic. Regardless though, if we think about the big picture, Google is the one that could have meaningfully increased their impact by redirecting their efforts towards more serious problems. The time spent commenting on this issue on HN pales in comparison and I'm not sure how one could ask the "don't you have anything better to do?" question of commenters without asking it of Google. At least if their opinion truly is that this doesn't matter either way.

BadCookie 5y ago
I agree. The serious problems that need solving are things like police killing Black people unjustly and young gay people harming themselves because their parents don’t accept them. This excessive language policing is a distraction from the real problems in my opinion.