triply, chances are good that the person/people digging this stuff up and outing it have no “skin in the game,” i.e. they’re not a member of whatever group of people the tweets were supposedly about. chances are they’re young white “woke” kids who do this so they can feel important.
When is the poor, beleaguered, white man gonna get a break from this terrible oppression?
CMC fnord!
Care to revise your opinion?
Sing it.
maybe sometime after you post something other than a one-line non sequitur.
If they weren’t actually accomplishing something, no one would get mad at them.
What they are doing is leveraging the power of speech to provide consequences for racism and bigotry. Rather than let it run unchecked, they use their speech to shine a spotlight on it. They don’t make excuses for it, even if the person is on their side.
And note I said “bigotry,” not “every possible thing they may have done wrong in their fucking lives.” That’s minimizing language. Fortunately, the guy involved isn’t making those excuses. He’s taking personal responsibility, realizing he made a mistake, and owning up to it, while showing he’s moved on from it.
Are there some circumstances where the Internet and social media’s megaphone for speech is used incorrectly? Sure–usually when someone doesn’t have the facts. Do some people cross a line into doing more than speech? Sure, and they deserve to be condemned.
But all these people are doing is sharing their opinion that the guy should give an apology for what he said. How is that supposed to be some horrible thing?
It isn’t–the people who want to get away with things just claim it is in an attempt to fight back. You’re using the same speech–but your speech is finding it harder to find an agreeable audience. Your speech is losing in the marketplace of ideas.
One of the many, many things I find weird about this is that the tweet police seem inordinately interested in speech. I’ve no way of knowing this, but my gut tells me that if someone on Twitter found out the Busch charity guy had, say, stolen a car or something, they wouldn’t have made a thing of it. They probably would’ve thought “It was eight years ago. He was a kid. Why bring up ancient history?” or something like that. This, despite the fact that stealing a car is, by any objective measure, far worse than telling a racist joke on Twitter.
My theory is that we, as a society, have decided that childhood crimes (with some exceptions, of course) shouldn’t follow us into adulthood, but we’ve yet to reach the same conclusion about offensive tweets. Personally, I don’t think there’s any good reason for the tweets to be held to a higher standard. What do you think?
This post drew three responses (not counting mine, here) and two out of three appeared not to understand it was sarcastic!
Wow. This should tell us something; I’m not sure what.
I’m glad this happened to a white guy. He deserved it for being white. All white people are racists and need to be punished.
It’s The Internet Age[sup]TM[/sup]. It’s the new normal. Get used to it. It’s not going back the way it was.
There is a reason most people prefer to post to boards relatively anonymously. It’s because the social justice mob is dangerously insane. At least the Europeans recognize the danger in a whole life being archived by Google.
That’s hilarious. What should happen is a systematic investigation of reporters, editors, and publishers that goes back to their birth. Every embarrassing or offensive text, photo, video, recording that can be acquired should be. At some point, enough of those who enable internet mob behavior will be impacted that perhaps a positive change can occur.
Hey, make it happen. All of that stuff is out there, and it wouldn’t bother me in the least to have someone dig it all up. I recognize that people aren’t perfect, and criticism of offensive speech isn’t the end of the world. It can even be helpful! The folks mentioned in this thread generally are doing fine, and probably have learned something from being publicly criticized. Their lives weren’t ruined.
It’s okay to talk about this stuff. It’s even okay to criticize people for things they said and did in the past.
I don’t mind a critique. I mind the scale of reaction that can be mobilized in a seemingly random manner. If people were being honest instead of, and this isn’t directed at you, posting snarky and racist one liners they’d be worried.
Who should be worried, and why? Seems to me like the consequences are pretty nonexistant (i.e. just mild criticism and mockery) if someone accepts that they did/said something wrong and apologizes sincerely for it, in general.
I’m just curious. I was born in the middle of the civil rights movement, 1963. Ya know, half a fucking century ago.
What year were Carson King’s parents born?
Am I gonna die before the fucking parents of kids like this teach them that this kind of casual racism isn’t in any way acceptable?
Good for you. I am embarrassed and stunned that your upbringing allowed you to think it was funny in the first place.
CMC fnord!
Losing a job is a nonexistent consequence?
Where’s your self-righteous voice in the Trudeau black face thread?
Stick to calling people ‘potty mouth’, it’s what you’re best at.
CMC fnord!
So a teen is worth criticizing yet the prime minister of a country that is in the top 157 of influence and power in the world isn’t? Whose words and actions actually have more reach?