3 ms·

This comment does not belong on HN. It's angry, self-righteous, and unproductive. Comparing people who defecate, urinate, shoot-up, stink, and leave needles on

by jquery 14y ago

This comment does not belong on HN. It's angry, self-righteous, and unproductive. Comparing people who defecate, urinate, shoot-up, stink, and leave needles on your front porch to other minorities is really offensive. Especially when these people have all the resources in the world to get out of their situation. Often they have better apartments than the people they are begging money from.

georgeorwell 14y ago
> This comment does not belong on HN. Just as you petitioned SF to get rid of the homeless people from your precious neighborhood, you can downvote my post, flag it, and petition PG to ban my account if you don't want me to post comments like this. If it fails, just as your real life petition failed, you can always find another web forum. What's becoming clear is that I don't belong on HN. There's just no real sense of belonging that I have. Despite understanding all of the technical stuff, I just don't seem to fit in with you guys, and I don't really share a lot of your views, including PG's. It's almost like I come here just to differentiate myself from what I am not, and to show off technical knowledge once in a while.
- jquery 14y ago
  Sorry, this isn't a forum where saying "Fuck You" to another poster is okay.
  - georgeorwell 14y ago
    If it's not okay, why does my comment have more upvotes than downvotes? For me, this isn't a forum where degrading a whole class of society is okay. Except, from what you guys are saying, maybe it is okay because it's a visible and personally annoying class? That is where the anger comes from. What's ironic about all this is that if you read his later comments, the original guy I responded to apparently shares my opinions more than yours. Finally, did you get so hung up on the F-bomb that you missed my edit to the original post?
juan_juarez 14y ago
> these people have all the resources in the world to get out of their situation Perhaps you've missed the changes in the last 40 years of American funding for welfare and social services.
- jquery 14y ago
  Perhaps you forgot we are talking about San Francisco?
potatolicious 14y ago
I was annoyed by georgeorwell's self-righteous tone as well. Pejorative or not, the homelessness in San Francisco is a substantial social and economic problem that does require something different than what we have right now, and whitewashing the language certainly isn't going to help matters. That said, you're also completely out to lunch. > "Especially when these people have all the resources in the world to get out of their situation. They can? Have you been homeless, or worked with the homeless? What do you think is a sufficient upside to convince someone to be hated by everyone around them, be addicted to all kinds of dangerous chemicals, shit on the streets, and sleep in their own filth? Do you also realize that the majority of the homeless population suffers from severe mental illnesses - severe enough to make them effectively non-functioning? Do you know the proportion of the homeless population who are veterans suffering from PTSD? So you have a group of people who are, predominantly, suffering from a wide variety of mental illnesses that prevent them from functioning in life, and they have "all the resources in the world" to get out of it. Right. That's like chaining someone up, giving them a nail file, and asserting that they have all the tools to get out of it. Hell, even if we institutionalized most of these people the bulk of them won't ever "get out of it". There are two distinct classes of the homeless - the situationally homeless, and the chronically homeless. Most liberal-minded people like to believe that all homeless are capable of being returned to "normal", where in fact a large portion of them will never escape their mental illnesses enough to be functional members of mainstream society, even with the best of help. > "Often they have better apartments than the people they are begging money from." Citation needed on this. There are, of course, some people out there scamming a quick buck by taking advantage of the homelessness situation. Did you watch that one NBC expose on that one woman in Queens, NY, and extrapolate this to all homeless?
- georgeorwell 14y ago
  For what it's worth, I am annoyed by my own self-righteous tone. I didn't respond with maturity. I've admitted as much elsewhere if you read the thread. Thank you for clarifying many of the issues here. I don't agree that challenging negative language and asserting neutral language is "whitewashing". I believe that it helps matters relative to the negative language. If you wouldn't use language to somebody's face, it's still abusive to use it behind their back, because it doesn't encourage kindness towards them. Would you call a homeless person with a crack addiction that you knew by name a crackhead to his face? If I take a moment to imagine going outside and doing this, it makes me want to cry. Whitewashing is what I associate with taking something bad and making it look good by changing the language. I don't want to do that. But then there's even the more generic argument for not talking badly about people behind their backs: if person A says something mean to person B about person C behind their back, it actually hurts A because person B will start operating on the basis that when their back is turned, person A will talk about them in a similarly bad way to persons D, E, and F. By the way, this page says 1/3 of the homeless population has severe mental illness (not just schizophrenia): http://www.schizophrenia.com/szfacts.htm http://www.schizophrenia.com/szfacts.htm I don't think that page includes simple alcoholism and drug addiction, which are legitimately disabling physical and mental illnesses on their own. After that, I'm not sure there are any homeless that are unaccounted for. None of them are there because they are "lazy bums".

by jquery 14y ago

georgeorwell 14y ago

> This comment does not belong on HN. Just as you petitioned SF to get rid of the homeless people from your precious neighborhood, you can downvote my post, flag it, and petition PG to ban my account if you don't want me to post comments like this. If it fails, just as your real life petition failed, you can always find another web forum. What's becoming clear is that I don't belong on HN. There's just no real sense of belonging that I have. Despite understanding all of the technical stuff, I just don't seem to fit in with you guys, and I don't really share a lot of your views, including PG's. It's almost like I come here just to differentiate myself from what I am not, and to show off technical knowledge once in a while.

jquery 14y ago
Sorry, this isn't a forum where saying "Fuck You" to another poster is okay.
- georgeorwell 14y ago
  If it's not okay, why does my comment have more upvotes than downvotes? For me, this isn't a forum where degrading a whole class of society is okay. Except, from what you guys are saying, maybe it is okay because it's a visible and personally annoying class? That is where the anger comes from. What's ironic about all this is that if you read his later comments, the original guy I responded to apparently shares my opinions more than yours. Finally, did you get so hung up on the F-bomb that you missed my edit to the original post?

juan_juarez 14y ago

> these people have all the resources in the world to get out of their situation Perhaps you've missed the changes in the last 40 years of American funding for welfare and social services.

jquery 14y ago
Perhaps you forgot we are talking about San Francisco?

potatolicious 14y ago

I was annoyed by georgeorwell's self-righteous tone as well. Pejorative or not, the homelessness in San Francisco is a substantial social and economic problem that does require something different than what we have right now, and whitewashing the language certainly isn't going to help matters. That said, you're also completely out to lunch. > "Especially when these people have all the resources in the world to get out of their situation. They can? Have you been homeless, or worked with the homeless? What do you think is a sufficient upside to convince someone to be hated by everyone around them, be addicted to all kinds of dangerous chemicals, shit on the streets, and sleep in their own filth? Do you also realize that the majority of the homeless population suffers from severe mental illnesses - severe enough to make them effectively non-functioning? Do you know the proportion of the homeless population who are veterans suffering from PTSD? So you have a group of people who are, predominantly, suffering from a wide variety of mental illnesses that prevent them from functioning in life, and they have "all the resources in the world" to get out of it. Right. That's like chaining someone up, giving them a nail file, and asserting that they have all the tools to get out of it. Hell, even if we institutionalized most of these people the bulk of them won't ever "get out of it". There are two distinct classes of the homeless - the situationally homeless, and the chronically homeless. Most liberal-minded people like to believe that all homeless are capable of being returned to "normal", where in fact a large portion of them will never escape their mental illnesses enough to be functional members of mainstream society, even with the best of help. > "Often they have better apartments than the people they are begging money from." Citation needed on this. There are, of course, some people out there scamming a quick buck by taking advantage of the homelessness situation. Did you watch that one NBC expose on that one woman in Queens, NY, and extrapolate this to all homeless?

georgeorwell 14y ago
For what it's worth, I am annoyed by my own self-righteous tone. I didn't respond with maturity. I've admitted as much elsewhere if you read the thread. Thank you for clarifying many of the issues here. I don't agree that challenging negative language and asserting neutral language is "whitewashing". I believe that it helps matters relative to the negative language. If you wouldn't use language to somebody's face, it's still abusive to use it behind their back, because it doesn't encourage kindness towards them. Would you call a homeless person with a crack addiction that you knew by name a crackhead to his face? If I take a moment to imagine going outside and doing this, it makes me want to cry. Whitewashing is what I associate with taking something bad and making it look good by changing the language. I don't want to do that. But then there's even the more generic argument for not talking badly about people behind their backs: if person A says something mean to person B about person C behind their back, it actually hurts A because person B will start operating on the basis that when their back is turned, person A will talk about them in a similarly bad way to persons D, E, and F. By the way, this page says 1/3 of the homeless population has severe mental illness (not just schizophrenia): http://www.schizophrenia.com/szfacts.htm http://www.schizophrenia.com/szfacts.htm I don't think that page includes simple alcoholism and drug addiction, which are legitimately disabling physical and mental illnesses on their own. After that, I'm not sure there are any homeless that are unaccounted for. None of them are there because they are "lazy bums".