Same here time-wise. We had lots of dumb-ass games that involved punching each other in the arm beyond just the circle game.
All I can think of, and it’s something of a stretch, is that maybe somebody they played the circle game with wasn’t at the football game- brother, cousin, friend, and by doing it on TV, they thought they could get them from afar, and then punch them later.
But I agree with the others- I think it’s more likely that it’s teenagers/young adults trying to be trollish for fun, rather than anything sinister. That’s not to say that they couldn’t be white supremacists, but I think the odds are probably against it.
Yeah, people still play this game. Often a friend on Facebook will post a picture, like the Mona Lisa or something, and there she is making the OK sign. If I look at it, the poster wins. It’s stupid and childish, but not racist.
In my part of the AF (communications), we didn’t actually punch people, just knowing that you made somebody look at it was funny enough.
Nope, it’s not the same scenario at all. It’s more like the situation with the swastika, which no one addressed.
At one point, the swastika was an innocuous symbol used to mean good luck and other positive connotations, not for decades, not for centuries, but for millennia. That changed, not when one guy on the internet told another guy on the internet that the meaning had changed, but when a group of people started using it with a different meaning to signal to each other their membership in a particular group.
Your telling me the meaning has changed is not analogous at all.
You need to get off this “offended” bandwagon. It’s not about being “offended.” It’s about people saying things that suggest that some people should be considered unequal, or not deserving of respect or dignity or rights. It’s about suggesting that some people are legitimately locked out of certain corners of society.
People get angry not because they are “offended,” but because they are being threatened. The threat is to their status as equal members of society, something that has financial, health and other consequences.
See the post I replied to. DrDerth asserts that we should assume this is just a innocent game people are playing, because this assumption will eventually cause the game to die out. This makes no sense to me.
If they are doing this innocently (as he insists), without any attempt to troll or broadcast racism, shouldn’t they just continue to play the game irrespective of what others think of it? Either they are ignorant of outside perceptions or they aren’t. You can’t have it both ways.
Why do we want it to die out? Isn’t it better if white supremacists advertise themselves? I’m very serious. I think a lot of white kids get more racist from 18-22. They are raised with nominal ideas about equality, by parents who think not “teaching them to be racist” is the same as “teaching them to be not-racist”. Then they get into some environment where some white person tells them “oh, all white people know deep down inside that black people are basically animals, but you can’t say that. But we all know,” and they believe it. It’s an attractive belief, that you are better than other people. And it becomes increasingly internalized and normalized, because either people are repeating that shit to you, or they aren’t, but you think that’s because they are following the “we can’t say it out loud rule”. Honestly, even if they kick out these cadets, white supremacists will translate that as “they were punished for breaking the ‘don’t say it out loud’ rule, even though most white people agree with them”.
When I was young, I thought the racists were the old people and they would die out. But I am more and more aware that people can become racist, at any age, and that the late teens/early 20s seem to be a key interval for this transformation. Figuring out who those young men and women are and dislodging that narrative is really, really important.
I think Dr. Deth thinks they are doing it to troll, knowing it means white supremacy. But they don’t mean it-mean-it, so we should ignore it and hope it goes away. That argument makes no sense to me, but I think that’s the one he means.
Bear_Nenno thinks it was entirely an innocent game and that they weren’t thinking about race or the racist implications at all, they just want to troll people into looking like they are looking at a dick (which is itself a pretty problematic game, as the whole point is “I made you look gay, haha”)
It seems like you’re trying really hard to miss the point.
The question is not whether someone is offended by a hand gesture. The question is HOLY FUCK WE HAVE OFFICERS-IN-TRAINING IN THE US MILITARY PUBLICLY MAKING WHITE POWER HAND GESTURES!
Yes, it should be investigated. I’d say there’s a very small chance that these guys were playing this circle game thing, because it makes no sense in this context, and it’s very likely that they were getting yuks by making white power hand gestures. But let’s investigate to find out.
Yes, ONE person said that. Doesn’t make it true. Similar to “ok sign = white power” or whatever stupid thing it’s supposed to mean.
I mean, if morons on 4chan started holding up “Manda JO” signs at sporting events and said that was the new “White Power” slogan, would you change your name?
If racists started using my handle as a sign for racism, and it became kind of a thing, hell to the yes I’d change my handle in a moment.
If it became a thing that the Klan did to pay for goods and services using only using one dollar bills, I would also stop doing that thing, because there’s no real reason for me to keep my handle or pay for groceries with 80 $1 bills, but there is good reason to distance myself from racist creeps.
About how many “racists” would have to start doing that before you changed your handle? It’s not that hard to get something like that going in this day and age.
Should I change my username because some people think I am honoring Charles Manson?
It’s just a handle. I can get rid of it because I get tired of typing so many letters when I log in. If it comes to my attention that racists are using it, I’m not going to go around the Internets counting how many users are doing such a thing, but then if the total number of users is one fewer than some arbitrary number I chose, I would keep it. This is not how humans work.
Your choice. I’m not aware that Charles Manson worship is an actual concern these days. For all I know, you might be a huge fan of Charles Manson but I’m not aware of it, nor do I care. I would care if my handle made me look like an associate of racists.
It’s like anything else. How many people IRL do you know named Adolf Hitler? That’s aren’t white supremacists? Yet prior to oh say 1934 it was a perfectly normal name. If you met a guy at a bar with than name in 2019, what would you think? Would you give him the benefit of the doubt?
If someone has a bumper sticker or license plate with “88” on it, my first thought is he is a neo-nazi. I’m sorry if that’s his birthday. He should have put 1988, or 11/1/88.
I just wondered because it would be a fun kind of experiment to see if you WOULD actually change your username. I live in Southern Maryland, and there are plenty of racists around. Not too hard to get them to start using “Ravenman” as a code for something.
It’s interesting that you would change something about yourself based on what racist morons are doing.