5 ms·
Small Penis Rule
- z_open 3mo agoI can't imagine judges would normally except this especially since it seems to be a known way to skirt law.
- steego 3mo agoIf nobody brings forward a lawsuit in the first place, why would there be a judge?
- nfw2 3mo agoIt's not a legal defense strategy, it's a social engineering strategy
- tarpitt 3mo agoI think the point is that you can apply it to any shameful-enough aspect of the libel/parody.
- kelnos 3mo agoThe judge doesn't accept it, and the Wikipedia page points out that this isn't a good legal strategy for that reason. But it can be a good social-engineering strategy: the "rule" is based on the hope that the person on the other end of it won't bring legal action in the first place, for fear of socially confirming their association with a small-penis'd character.
- brookst 3mo agoSigh. Reductionist thinking again. Yes, of course, if you literally say “small penis” the plaintiff would rightfully cite this history. But it’s not meant to be taken literally, like those are magic words. You say “he failed upwards, funded by family wealth and connections, despite everyone thinking he was an idiot who could barely string a sentence together” The point is to emphasize, even exaggerate, low-status negative qualities.
- genxy 3mo agoIt isn't the size of your tort, it is how you use it. Also, are men this easily manipulated? Yes.
- zephen 3mo agoYes, I see you have produced a very small (re)tort, but arguably have used it well.
- PaulHoule 3mo agoWhere's @Cindy when you need her?
- cindyllm 3mo ago[dead]
- embedding-shape 3mo agoDidn't know we could summon him/her/it, but seems it worked. Strangeness all around.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- varispeed 3mo agoWhere are the pictures to see what exactly is the problem?
- stephbook 3mo agoRight in the article. On Windows, use "Magnifying Lens"
- sunaookami 3mo agoTry a mirror /s
- thih9 3mo agoThis time text is the better medium - it’s not easy to see the problem. While I say “not easy”, others might say “hard”. Both are fine - for all we know the problem might be both hard and not easy to see.
- conartist6 3mo agoI'm sure South Park had no idea about any of this
- khurs 3mo agoIt's pretty amazing that South Park hasn't been sued (or lost?) I wonder if Peter Thiel took umbrage at how South Park portrayed him recently [0] and is lurking in the shadows planning Gawker v2 [1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfSOC6-G044 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfSOC6-G044 [1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdrange/2016/06/21/peter-thiels-war-on-gawker-a-timeline/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdrange/2016/06/21/peter-thi...
- kps 3mo ago> It's pretty amazing that South Park hasn't been sued (or lost?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell tl;dr: > Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that parodies of public figures, even those intending to cause emotional distress, are protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
- to11mtm 3mo agoAnd indeed South Park has always made a point to have extreme satire that is implausible to help establish that such is parody. [0] The episodes in the last year have gone to extreme lengths to help make the distinction as clear as possible. [0] - We can go back as far as, I don't think it has been established that Barbara Streisand can in fact turn into a robot...
- BuyMyBitcoins 3mo agoI am in no way a public figure, and will likely never be one, but if the South Park writers decided to go after me my strategy would be to hunker down and just hope the episode isn’t good.
- 3mo ago
- comrade1234 3mo agoIf you accuse someone (not me) of having a small penis (I don't) they (not me) don't have to show that they (not me) have a large penis (like me). Just the accusation they made (to you, not me) is slander enough. But I'd gladly drop-trousers in a court.
- arijun 3mo agoI don't think it would be me accusing you of having a small penis (since of course you don't). It's me accusing someone named romcade4321 of being a generally shitty person, and also having a small penis. If you think romcade4321 is a reference to you, you would have to prove the similarity between them and you (maybe by dropping your trousers in court?)
- baobabKoodaa 3mo agoThis is not the point. The point is about deterring lawsuits. The point is not about defending lawsuits. This is very clearly explained in OP.
- comrade1234 3mo agoSounds very small-penis.
- IshKebab 3mo agoIt also makes zero sense. You don't have to admit that you have a small penis to take legal action against someone that writes an insulting version of you with a small penis. People are not identified by their penis size.
- cwmoore 3mo agoI don’t think you’d get to use the courts anymore.
- jona-f 3mo agoYes, only men with small penises are allowed to court.
- fragmede 3mo agoThen again, money. > A jury in New Mexico awarded $412 million to a man who sued over what he said were unnecessary erectile dysfunction shots that decimated his penis On the one hand, now you're famous for having a dick that doesn't work, on the other hand, $412 million. https://amp.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article296257084.html https://amp.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article296...
- draw_down 3mo ago[dead]
- bellowsgulch 3mo ago$412 million in actualized damages? That’s international dynastic money over a penis.
- altmanaltman 3mo agoNo they did not give him 412 million dollars. They appealed the judgement and will fight it out for years. The man is 72 years old. Of that 412, most of it is punitive damages which will be fought over. Interest would acrue and if the clinic loses, they could be on the hook to pay $500 million+ but that's really very unrealistic.
- cwmoore 3mo agoJustice is so rarely poetic.
- BuyMyBitcoins 3mo agoYou could write a Seinfeld episode around this. The defendant fears that the news coverage of his case means that no woman would ever be interested in him again. Once the judgement and the payout is announced he finds himself being constantly approached by gorgeous women.
- sebastianconcpt 3mo agoAnother day in Everything is About Mate Suppression
- rsstack 3mo agoA Jewish comedian made a joke about how jews (only in the US*) were offended that Ferengi in Star Trek were based on them - "why would we assume these ugly greedy people are _us_?" *Outside the US, it looks like the Ferengi are mocking American capitalist culture.
- arijun 3mo agoI think that is a bad example. I haven't heard of Jewish people being offended by Ferengi, but anti-Semitic depictions are very often exactly "ugly, greedy people" (just look at any Nazi propaganda). Once it becomes a common thread it works less as a defense. I imagine "small hands" would similarly work poorly as a defense against a defamation suit from Trump: he doesn't have to claim he has small hands, only that he is often depicted as having them.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- krapp 3mo agoIn the case of the Ferengi, "ugly greedy people with big noses," specifically greedy for an in-universe gold analogue, short, always cheating people; the analogues with common anti-semitic stereotypes are certainly there. Then again Armin Shimmerman, who played Quark and is Jewish himself, has said that people in different countries see different stereotypes in the Ferengi - such as the Chinese or the Irish - so it probably depends on one's own own cultural indoctrination. I think a better case could be made for the Klingons being racist caricatures, since in TOS their look was intentionally based on Asiatic and Mongol people in order to make them seem more frightening and villainous.
- to11mtm 3mo ago> I think a better case could be made for the Klingons being racist caricatures, since in TOS their look was intentionally based on Asiatic and Mongol people in order to make them seem more frightening and villainous. In my head-canon TOS Klingons are Russia and Romulans are China. Reasons for this; - Star Trek 6 (The whole thing is an allegory for the end of the cold war, right down to Praxis being a stand-in for Chernobyl) - That fight scene in 'The Trouble with Tribbles' that strikes me as 'feels like a rehashed tale about a barfight between Allied and Soviet soldiers in pre-split post WW2 Germany' - Romulans being more 'secluded' and more about political and legal intrigue than violence (If we consider Klingon direct violence a stand-in for USSR/Russian 'maybe put in house arrest before we assasinate' vs China's 'throw the rigid legal book at them')
- omoikane 3mo agoA related concept in Chinese is 對號入座: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8D%E8%99%9F%E5%85%A5%E5%BA%A7#Chinese https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8D%E8%99%9F%E5%85%A5%E... An example might be some person A saying "only an idiot with this set of very specific negative attributes would do this thing". And then person B came out in the public saying they had been slandered by person A, thus indirectly admitting to having those very specific negative attirbutes. Basically if person A invokes something like the small penis rule, it's often better for person B to stay quiet to avoid 對號入座.
- jr_isidore 3mo ago[dead]
- boho_derogatory 3mo agoThat example doesn't express this at all. A better one would be saying "Jane and I partied all night," and Jane's murderer blurting out, "That's impossible!"
- alexpotato 3mo agoI'm always fascinated by these tricks of game theory. e.g. in business school, the dean of the undergraduate school had this story: "When I was a practicing lawyer working on wills and estates, people would often ask me to cut someone completely out of their will. I would always say that a better option was to write something like 'To my daughter Susan, I leave $1,000. She always said that she wanted to be financially independent from me so this is an amount to show her I lover her.' Clients would always think this would send the wrong message and I would replay: 'No, no. If Susan fights the will and says she should have gotten more, the judge will say: but she clearly left you something and pointed out that she loved you AND took your wishes into account' " I wish there was a book or collection of these types of tricks to study.
- arijun 3mo agoWait I thought standard practice was to leave $1 to show that they were considered and purposefully removed from the will? Does that fail in court?
- teddyh 3mo ago“To my loyal butler ‘You There’, for his decades of service, I leave a pittance, to be paid in 20 equal installments of 1/20th of a pittance each.”
- keane 3mo agoKind of related is peppercorn leases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(law)
- IncreasePosts 3mo agoMultiple times in my life, a potential romantic interest asked how big it was, and I told them it was tiny. This led them to believe that it was large, because what guy who is tiny would say it was tiny? Suffice to say they were a bit disappointed when expectations met reality
- 3mo ago
- jancsika 3mo agoI wonder if the Catch Me if You Can guy counts. He apparently lied about a lot of his adventures as a scam artist, making him more of a fabulist. However, if anyone taken in by his stories were to complain publicly (say, a book publisher or something), they'd be admitting not only to being a rube, but a rube to a liar who had already claimed publicly to be a scam artist. Even worse, that scam would be real and count as a success, restoring the scam artist's tarnished reputation from fabulist back to bona fide scam artist.
- strathmeyer 3mo ago[dead]
- torginus 3mo ago> For a fictional portrait to be actionable, it must be so accurate that a reader of the book would have no problem linking the two Sorry this argument makes no sense. If I (or any average reader) read a passage dissing a public figure (not me), which describes them with a small penis, I wouldn't consider the description as not fitting - I have no way of telling how big their penis is. If the public person in question came forward, and read the passage, he could successfully argue, that readers of the book would have no information about the size of his package, and thus that would be irrelevant to the argument. So him suing the author based on this would not mean he admits his dong is small.
- chistev 3mo agoMaybe it doesn't have to be a literal small penis? Maybe it could be describing the person in such a way that it's clear they are the one being described, but then including something about the character that they wouldn't want to risk people thinking is true.
- tangenter 3mo agoAfter Rick Beato recently twisted the blade hard on how musically inept the NYT music review panel is, this level of legal ignorance pales in comparison.