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Try being a bit less condescending. Just because someone thinks displays like this are hypocritical doesn't mean they are heartless. It could mean they are acut

by joaren 12y ago

Try being a bit less condescending. Just because someone thinks displays like this are hypocritical doesn't mean they are heartless. It could mean they are acutely aware that the only reason people care about this is incidental circumstance, and that equally sad events pass by without scrutiny because it didn't happen to someone who's milked it out for attention. Because that's what blogging about your daughter's cancer is. If you're the kind of person who prefers fairness over indulging feels, then token efforts like pinning ribbons to things look like an ostentatious display of hypocrisy to friends and family, to show that you care about something everyone still collectively agrees not to do anything about (i.e. a kid dying).

freshyill 12y ago
Either he's feigning ignorance over why anybody would be the slightest bit empathetic toward the death of Eric Meyer's daughter or he's too much of a robot to actually understand. You can make an argument that HN must be 100 percent on-topic, at all times, and that it doesn't belong here. But you can also argue that we are all humans and we can just accept it once in a while, even here. To jump to the conclusion that it's all just for show, and nobody will actually take any sort of real action is pure cynicism. People have actually been affected by this, in ways that are certainly small in comparison to the the way the Meyer family has been. The most visible gestures might not accomplish much, but many people are actually donating money to charities that have a very real impact.
- joaren 12y ago
  A year from now the people who turned their avatars purple today won't remember the hash tag or what it was for. This isn't about one kid dying, or many kids dying. It's about a bunch of people frantically acting to hide their sense of impotence.
  - freshyill 12y ago
    I disagree. Eric Meyer has been writing about Rebecca's cancer since they found out on their vacation last summer, and many have been following. This isn't something that just happened today. It's been happening for nearly a year. The thoughts it raises, particularly for parents, are not the kind that can just be dismissed once the hashtag stops trending.
    - drhouse_md 12y ago
      It was actually counterproductive to leave out the context of this guy developing CSS and a link to whatever blog documented the cancer's story. The given explanation was simply adults don't have favorite colors, children do. You're perfectly welcome to have fewer people interested and make the whole thing seem like a pretentious non-sequitur to 99.99% of the world's population, but I guess you didn't think Rebecca deserved better and were simply being incompetent.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- follyfalls 12y ago
  >Either he's feigning ignorance over why anybody would be the slightest bit empathetic toward the death of Eric Meyer's daughter or he's too much of a robot to actually understand. Nah. This kind of human behavior isn't the least bit surprising to me. My questions thereof were more so rhetorical; I mean to draw attention to what I feel is the absurdity of this behavior. People do things contrary to reason, sometimes even in spite of it. Birds go tweet tweet. >To jump to the conclusion that it's all just for show, and nobody will actually take any sort of real action is pure cynicism. This is the conclusion to which you have jumped, not I. I fail to see where I even implied anything of this sort. I don't believe that people are doing this as an empty gesture without any feeling behind it, at least not universally. I do, however, think that it's ridiculous. For me, perhaps it's not the sorrow, or the condolences, that I find to be most ridiculous. On the contrary, it's these things prepackaged into something of a meme that I find to be most alarming and highly artificial. Foremost, the hashtag #663399becca is a hideous contrivance and shits all over the poor girl's name. I guess #rebeccameyers would have been too pedestrian. I question, why purple at all? Most people have favorite colors (the blog post argues otherwise). Why make this the focal point? Why would you summarize or even emblematize her existence with her favorite color, of all things? First person to answer along the lines of "because CSS" should get metaphorically smacked upside the head. It reminds me of when the students at my younger brother's high school collectively wore hoodies in "solidarity" regarding the death of Trayvon Martin. To me, this whole #663399becca is the same brand of stupidity. It's essentially wearing a digital t-shirt that proclaims "HEY EVERYONE, I'M MOURNING THE UNTIMELY LOSS OF REBECCA MEYERS." How about you? Oh, I see you have on the purple t-shirt on, and your accessible uniformity brings me comfort. The whole thing is cheap and mass-produced like a Wendy's value meal. It's a 9/11 bumper sticker. It's a Che Guevara t-shirt. It's a gimmick, and it actually does a disservice to her memory, because now it's not really about her, it's about the color purple and your hexcode-hashtag and your purple avatar and maybe we should make the header of this website purple. The name of the blog post is "The Color Purple". I fully understand that people are sooner moved by tragedies "near" to them more than the comparatively distant deaths of countless people. Nothing is surprising about that. But how about these people be about it rather than wear it? It's ironic, the desire to make the hashtag a trending topic on Twitter, because the very nature of trends is that they're transient, which are exactly the things that death and loss are not. So I see my colleagues hop on this bandwagon and I think, yeah, go ahead and wear your purple avatar for a day, or two days, or a week. Eventually you will change your avatar to something "normal". In fact, after an arbitrary amount of time, that purple avatar will be passé and everyone will have moved on to newer gimmicks. And yet I'm allegedly the robot here? Do robots typically question their programming or try to see past their own bullshit? One commenter even described me as "disgusting", but if anything that's precisely what I seek to not be.

by joaren 12y ago

freshyill 12y ago

Either he's feigning ignorance over why anybody would be the slightest bit empathetic toward the death of Eric Meyer's daughter or he's too much of a robot to actually understand. You can make an argument that HN must be 100 percent on-topic, at all times, and that it doesn't belong here. But you can also argue that we are all humans and we can just accept it once in a while, even here. To jump to the conclusion that it's all just for show, and nobody will actually take any sort of real action is pure cynicism. People have actually been affected by this, in ways that are certainly small in comparison to the the way the Meyer family has been. The most visible gestures might not accomplish much, but many people are actually donating money to charities that have a very real impact.

joaren 12y ago
A year from now the people who turned their avatars purple today won't remember the hash tag or what it was for. This isn't about one kid dying, or many kids dying. It's about a bunch of people frantically acting to hide their sense of impotence.
- freshyill 12y ago
  I disagree. Eric Meyer has been writing about Rebecca's cancer since they found out on their vacation last summer, and many have been following. This isn't something that just happened today. It's been happening for nearly a year. The thoughts it raises, particularly for parents, are not the kind that can just be dismissed once the hashtag stops trending.
  - drhouse_md 12y ago
    It was actually counterproductive to leave out the context of this guy developing CSS and a link to whatever blog documented the cancer's story. The given explanation was simply adults don't have favorite colors, children do. You're perfectly welcome to have fewer people interested and make the whole thing seem like a pretentious non-sequitur to 99.99% of the world's population, but I guess you didn't think Rebecca deserved better and were simply being incompetent.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
follyfalls 12y ago
>Either he's feigning ignorance over why anybody would be the slightest bit empathetic toward the death of Eric Meyer's daughter or he's too much of a robot to actually understand. Nah. This kind of human behavior isn't the least bit surprising to me. My questions thereof were more so rhetorical; I mean to draw attention to what I feel is the absurdity of this behavior. People do things contrary to reason, sometimes even in spite of it. Birds go tweet tweet. >To jump to the conclusion that it's all just for show, and nobody will actually take any sort of real action is pure cynicism. This is the conclusion to which you have jumped, not I. I fail to see where I even implied anything of this sort. I don't believe that people are doing this as an empty gesture without any feeling behind it, at least not universally. I do, however, think that it's ridiculous. For me, perhaps it's not the sorrow, or the condolences, that I find to be most ridiculous. On the contrary, it's these things prepackaged into something of a meme that I find to be most alarming and highly artificial. Foremost, the hashtag #663399becca is a hideous contrivance and shits all over the poor girl's name. I guess #rebeccameyers would have been too pedestrian. I question, why purple at all? Most people have favorite colors (the blog post argues otherwise). Why make this the focal point? Why would you summarize or even emblematize her existence with her favorite color, of all things? First person to answer along the lines of "because CSS" should get metaphorically smacked upside the head. It reminds me of when the students at my younger brother's high school collectively wore hoodies in "solidarity" regarding the death of Trayvon Martin. To me, this whole #663399becca is the same brand of stupidity. It's essentially wearing a digital t-shirt that proclaims "HEY EVERYONE, I'M MOURNING THE UNTIMELY LOSS OF REBECCA MEYERS." How about you? Oh, I see you have on the purple t-shirt on, and your accessible uniformity brings me comfort. The whole thing is cheap and mass-produced like a Wendy's value meal. It's a 9/11 bumper sticker. It's a Che Guevara t-shirt. It's a gimmick, and it actually does a disservice to her memory, because now it's not really about her, it's about the color purple and your hexcode-hashtag and your purple avatar and maybe we should make the header of this website purple. The name of the blog post is "The Color Purple". I fully understand that people are sooner moved by tragedies "near" to them more than the comparatively distant deaths of countless people. Nothing is surprising about that. But how about these people be about it rather than wear it? It's ironic, the desire to make the hashtag a trending topic on Twitter, because the very nature of trends is that they're transient, which are exactly the things that death and loss are not. So I see my colleagues hop on this bandwagon and I think, yeah, go ahead and wear your purple avatar for a day, or two days, or a week. Eventually you will change your avatar to something "normal". In fact, after an arbitrary amount of time, that purple avatar will be passé and everyone will have moved on to newer gimmicks. And yet I'm allegedly the robot here? Do robots typically question their programming or try to see past their own bullshit? One commenter even described me as "disgusting", but if anything that's precisely what I seek to not be.