The SDMB was the first place I encountered the fact that some consider “Oriental” offensive when applied to people.
First of all, this made me laugh 
Secondly, WTF? I believe you, because this is the SDMB, but I still have to demand, in time honored fashioned CITE!?!
Several posters here.
At least 42 people think she should, at the very least, not be on the top 10.
And a 'nother whole mess of 'em here.
Do you live in America or Canada? From what I’ve learned here, it’s mostly just those two places where the term is considered offensive.
Ditto the word “Jap” in reference to a Japanese person- never encountered the idea it might be offensive until coming here.
This may be another regional one because there’s no way in hell you’d get away with referring to someone as a Jap in the UK.
Yeah. I am not doubting Martini, because like I said, different social circles, different experiences.
But I would never be able to bring myself to call someone a Jap. Just practicing it out loud makes me cringe, and this is someone that uses ‘nigger’ or ‘nigga’ several times a day, probably.
I never knew using the word “primitive” when talking about, say, cavemen, was a big insult to the cavemen, thanks to our recent college grad who jumped down my throat recently. Politically correct, much?
Ok, now I can add that to my list of things I’ve never experienced in real life. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who uses that word in everyday conversation. I heard one guy do it, about thirty years ago, and it shocked me then. It would be even more shocking now.
Oh, go down to your local public library if you want to hear “nigger” used to mean “person”. Fifty times a day, easily.
I might consider the polling thing to be a matter of age - you’re in your 20’s, as am I, but the SDMB often skews baby boomer, IMO. But in the other threads, I’m fairly awed.
Isn’t it possible that Megan Fox is just not attractive to some people? On a purely caveman level, I can agree, she’s got giant bazooms. But in an overall, “is this person attractive?” level she doesn’t even rate.
Justin_Bailey, believe me, that’s music to my ears. But I’m a girl, so I don’t count in this. IRL I’ve never encountered a straight male 18-35 (I don’t have friends from 35-45) who find her unattractive.
What I find most repulsive about her is her inability to act. Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, Anne Hathaway - beautiful, and talented. Megan Fox looks like she just finished up at a dirtbike rally.
I think my most eye-widening moment was the thread (and it was a long long time ago) about this guy/girl who was put in some sort of a social situation not involving Ren Faire or a Swinger’s Club where a peer had a young Asian male BDSM sx slave who acted like a dog hanging about (and I mean, literally acted like a dog) and the poster in question felt super uncomfortable and and wrote up something along the lines "why would anyone want to be an Asian sx slave dog, isn’t that sort of soul damaging/weird?" or something and people had a hissyfit because it was so judgey. And I was like WTF, unless I’ve making a foray to Swingles (sociological purposes only), I don’t find it acceptable to have someone’s Asian sx slave boi mawing on my fcking shoelaces by the guac bowl. But that is a super-bourgeois view around here, methinks. Or maybe it wasn’t the OP but a side anecdote from an offenderatus about how he/she knew an Asian boi sx slave dog-actor personally and was aware that it was a very emotionally fulfilling relationship for the “dog”-but the OP definitely involved discussing a BDSM degradation moment and people jumping on the OP for being judgey. Oooh, and then I’m 99% certain Diogenes popped in to be like "you btches crazy, clearly that person was molested as a child" and then the fireworks REALLY went off.
Anyway, that doesn’t compare to my favourite internet moment of all time. Darkhorseman’s predicament being discussed on journalfen. Nothing on the SDMB even compares to it.
Why the asterisks? We’re all adults here.
Speaking. Did you mean that gay guys don’t count as guys, or did you just forget that we exist?
Oh yeah, I keep having to explain this, maybe I should make it a signature. My employers (US federal agency) record every keystroke I make on my computer so everyone who works here avoids typing anything remotely colourful out.
Fair enough.
I agree with all the folks in the thread saying that we see some of these opinions online simply because they aren’t likely to come up in conversation. There’s also a large selection bias among friends. We tend to hang out with people who are at least somewhat similar to us.
People are also more outspoken online. I detest it when people walk into my store and they smell like they bathed in cologne, but I don’t say a word about it. If someone offers to buy me a Coors in a bar, I’ll politely express my interest in a Guinness instead, but I won’t insult their taste in beer (unless it’s a close friend, in which I’ll tell him the old joke about why Coors is like making love in a canoe).
The SDMB is an interesting self-selecting slice of humanity, but aside from some of the more off-beat sexual stuff (pedophilia and bestiality, for example), I really don’t see much on here that I haven’t seen in real life.
I don’t know anyone who gripes about them quite so vehemently, but I know a lot of people without cellphones, and two that have no phones at all.
Back when I was in college, I took some pride in not owning a television. I bought my first TV when I got married at age 26.
Yeah, but you don’t count, because you’re here on the SDMB. It’s not like you exist out in the real world or anything 
I’ll take a guess at it (for those who missed the original comment, it was about rap/hip-hop): I don’t care what music other people listen to. If I don’t like it, I just won’t listen to it. But fans of rap and hip-hop seem to feel that everyone else should have to listen to it. At gas stations, if the next car over has all the windows down and the music cranked to 110 decibels, it’s almost always rap or hip-hop. If I can hear your music when I’m sitting at my desk 30 feet from the road behind double-paned glass windows and you’re in your car with the windows rolled up, I can almost guarantee that what you’re inflicting on me is rap. I just don’t like people stuffing their music down my ears, and that’s what rap and hip-hop seem to be about. THAT is why I wish it would go away.
Really? In any given group of people I eat with, I’ll hear a lot of medium and medium-well, but there’s almost always at least one medium-rare (other than me and my son, who always order medium-rare). There’s not always a well-done or a rare (aside from my wife, who always orders rare), but it’s certainly not uncommon.
I agree-most of the o rly moments I’ve had are related to the off-beat sexuality threads. However, most of the social stuff discussed (racism, rape etc.) I’ve been privy to because I’m an attorney who works with a bunch of attorneys who will argue about anything given the chance or the subjects have come up as classroom/outside discussion points in law school. My law school classmates ran the gamut from Shodan-esque conservatism to RedFury-esque leftiness so I’ve pretty much heard it all. I think in that vein, the most offbeat argument I’ve heard on the SDMB that I’ve never heard anyone espouse in real life is that colonialism should never have died. I can’t recall who thinks that but I’m not sure if it qualifies since I can only pinpoint it to one person whose name escapes me.
Well more than anything else I figured it was a given that gay men wouldn’t want to have sex with a woman, and I didn’t feel the need to nitpick my own sentence to death with a lot of qualifiers that could easily be assumed by the reader.