You don’t give it to people who have been polite to you either, so that’s a pretty hollow statement.
I recognize that Crazy Canuck was just flinging insults, but I don’t believe that octo works for the Internet Research Agency. But I’ll run my Turing test on him anyway.
Hey Octo! You agree that Putin is a murderous and corrupt tyrant and is furthermore a pile of shite sculpted into human shape, right? (Feel free to elaborate for your entertainment and ours.)
Oh and Putin rose to power via a false-flag terrorist bombing blamed on Chechnya, but apparently conducted by Russian intelligence.
National Review: Vladimir Putin & 1999 Russian Apartment-House Bombings -- Was Putin Responsible? | National Review
NY Review of Books: Finally, We Know About the Moscow Bombings | Amy Knight | The New York Review of Books
I’m always up for a test. Yeah, I’d agree with your assessment of Putin. I think we made many strategic errors dealing with him however.
Wouldn’t read the NY Review of Books at all if it weren’t for the hot and racy personal ads. Yowza!
“Also, Dude, NPC is not the preferred nomenclature. Untermensch/untermenschen, please.”
CMC fnord!
What does a non-player character have to do with Nazis?
It’s the latest meme from the alt-right, meant to dehumanize those who believe in social justice or are basically anything but fascists. And yes, dehumanize is the operative word here - NPCs aren’t people. They don’t get treated like people in games. In many games, part of the fun is slaughtering them without repercussions, because you can. They don’t think. They don’t feel. they’re not people.
And so when the fucking neo-nazis on /pol/ start referring to their political enemies as “NPCs”, it’s worrying, because we know how the nazis tend to get with dehumanization. octopus, do us a favor, please don’t bring that shit in here.
I’ve encountered it in the wild lately, but didn’t know where it started. Since it was on Reddit and defending a Nazi, I assumed it came from r/the_donald. Fortunately, even on Reddit, no one would have that bullshit. I was surprised my post pointing out what critical thinking actually is got so many upvotes.
Well since you said please. 
You know that I am quite agreeable. Look at my avatar! It’s cuddly!
But keep in mind that broad brushing and often quite vile language is directed at conservatives and Republicans here so often I doubt it’s even remarkable at this point. Will we see a change from that? Or is this merely something that is irksome because it’s targeted at a group you associate with? In other words is it the tactic or the target?
I don’t want you to stop being gay/black/other thing you can’t change. I don’t want you to die. I want you to stop being a shitty person and stop holding shitty beliefs. Welcome to the fundamental difference between fascists and anti-fascists. And yeah, when you fall on the former side of that divide in your posting style and terminology, you can expect to get shit. Because fascists get shit. And republicans are one good useful terror attack away from going full-blown fascist.
And that is why we can’t have nice things!
Republicans are not fascists. That is tremendous hyperbole. Does the Republican party have a bunch of nuts in it? Yes. But anyways, this goes back to my complaint about Huey and some of the other folks on this board you won’t make any friends with these crazy broad brush attacks. What happens is you provoke equivalent or escalated rhetoric. That’s just human nature.
The current GOP is moving in a dangerously authoritarian direction which scares the shit out of me. I’m not going to wait until they become literal Nazis before I sound the alarm bells.
The inmates are running the asylum. The proof? They nominated and elected Donald Trump, and his support in the Republican party is about 85 percent!
I don’t recall accusing you of something you didn’t say. Here’s my depiction of the exchange: [INDENT]You: Huey bugs me for these reasons.
Me: Huey doesn’t bother me for these reasons. [/INDENT] No contradiction there. Now you may have been saying, “I morally object to Huey, and you should too.” If so, consider the above a necessary preamble. A serious ethical evaluation of Huey’s behavior belongs in GD and would apply various moral frameworks, followed by the author’s take. Not kidding. I do that occasionally. But refutations of ethical frameworks in the pit generally rely at least in part on mockery. Not kidding2. Because moral arguments tend to be axiom heavy, and you can’t disprove an axiom.
Part of Huey’s shtick is to take tropes invented by whites and throw them back at our face. Here’s a pro-tip BigT: when you say I’M ON YOUR SIDE, you invite ridicule. Blacks have heard that crap from liberal whites, just as they’ve heard white complements about so and so being a credit to his race. True, both examples are call-backs from the civil rights era, but still.
The autism discussion though has direct parallels to this board’s debate about the appropriateness of GD threads on race and IQ. Except in the case of race and IQ we know that part of the gap was due to racism, because the gap has halved since about 1945. On the subject of autism, we can only conjecture (reasonably but still) about under-reporting in minority communities.
Huey is NOT saying that the white posters here are gap-toothed basement dwelling pajama-clad cretins for whom a weekly shower is considered strictly optional. So why should they feel insulted? He just wants a scientific discussion of inbreeding and autism. It’s just a statistical association! He’s not speaking about most white people. HE’S ON YOUR SIDE!!!1!!! It’s a fact that Africa has greater genetic diversity than other continents, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they might have fewer autistic folk, Somalian populations notwithstanding. The good news is that a little condescending schooling (and showers!) can provide middle aged white autistic males with the tools to lead richer lives offline.
In case my position is lost in the irony, I’m noting that turnaround is fair play. Up to a point. It’s about time that American whites got the faintest, mildest whiff of the crap they’ve inflicted on their fellow countrymen. Even if some of this (not all) is intergenerational. Huey’s shtick would be inappropriate on twitter or in GD, IMHO. But for the pit? Rock on for now. (Not sure about in 6 months time.)
I should say that unlike most of BigT’s critics, I don’t have a problem with his moralizing. Admittedly, I typically stop reading it after a couple of sentences, but still. On the plus column, BigT has self-awareness: he grasps how folks perceive him and in my view has received disproportionate flack. With that in mind, I hope BigT takes my snark above in the right way: again, ridicule is one of few ways of addressing moral axioms, though reductio ad absurdum is another related approach.
ETA: Goddamn it, top of the page. I don’t like showcasing my attacks like that.
The problem with “turnaround is fair play” is that I hear a similar attitude from some of my countrymen - “We suffered from antisemitism for so long, it’s OK to be racist now.” It’s bullshit.
It’s interesting, though: Israelis are among the few people in the world who are deeply intimate with both sides of the racism coin. Perhaps that’s the reason why I have a hard time accepting that sort of attitude from anyone, for any reason.
There is nothing easier than convincing us humans that we should have what we want because we deserve it.
That is worse than useless for people who do not use the tropes.
Using racist language to combat racism is as effective as using sexist language to combat sexism. And calling bigoted speech a trope is a new one.
And if Huey really wanted to debate a possible link between autism and inbreeding in the white population why not open it in GD where a fruitful debate could be had?
On the other hand, it feels reasonable to me that some of the same folks who pushed back against proponents of race realism and its relationship to IQ would similarly push back against the autism-inbreeding nonsense. It’s either whackadoodle or mild trolling, and either way I doubt it accomplishes much.
Agreed on both counts. Sorry, BigT, but your posts are long and tend to riff on the same themes. Dunno why you get so much shit, though.
Sorry, not allowed to. My doctor says I’m absolutely forbidden from doing anything that might make octopus even the least bit happy. It’s for my own good.
Well, that and it’s obvious wackery in the Pit, a place where I’ve personally accused people of fucking their own mothers on multiple occasions. Now, if Huey were to start some* GD* thread about it, I’ll be right on that.
Turnabout is fair play would be bullshit in Liberia, or in a hypothetical country run by African Americans.
Put another way, it’s never ok to be racist as defined by “Prejudice+power”. But I’m defending ironic prejudice as part of a presentation of the nature of ongoing white supremacy. In the pit. Remember the context: most posters here fail Racism 101. (I will only claim to score a B-.)