Ken WhiteI continue to be mystified by the sentiment that being a First Amendment advocate means *socially* tolerating people I find obnoxious or contemptible. I keep getting “what kind of free speech advocate blocks people?” The kind who doesn’t deal with assholes when not professionally compelled to do so. The First Amendment isn’t a hair shirt.
/2 I mean most of these people like to imagine that they’re fuckin Galileo tugging at the hem of my robe asking me to consider their alternative to geocentricity in the name of Science. Guys, that’s just not you. I’ve got plenty of people already yelling at me about how I’m a cuck or wanting to lecture me about whether or not women have penises or about how the incorporation doctrine is wrong. If I need input on those subjects I’m all set, thanks.
/3 Sometimes it seems like some sort of stylized cult of manhood, where to be a Real Man you have to constantly surround yourself with people you find completely insufferable. Leave me out of that one Charles Atlas. And it’s not like they really mean it. The dudes wanting me to sit through their right-wing bullshit are not seeking out dialogue with purple-haired Che-shirt wearers screaming at them that meat is murder. Spare me the pretense.
/4 This kind of goes to my whole quarrel with the “complain to kids about cancel culture” approach. The free speech bargain — leave the government out of your beefs and solve them yourselves with speech and association — relies on me feeling free to say when I think people are assholes and shun them. A society that tries to sell me on “oh assholes have a maximum right to speak but we are going to enact a quasi-Victorian set of social rules about how you react” is unappealing to me.
Conlan Spangler@Popehat This is the whole issue with the false cultural dichotomy we’ve built for ourselves. (The collective) we want there to be only two types of people: our team and theirs. But there is at least one additional type—the type that says, “A lot of the time, both of you need to fuck off.”
Laces
Staid Winnow
arceuthobium@staidwinnow @conlan @Popehat wait, the giant’s not a metaphor? This is as dumb as the South Park argument that criminal conspiracies can never exist because used underpants are worthless.
@theothersimo @staidwinnow I don't want to speak for Sancho, but I think it’s… um, all a metaphor?
@conlan @staidwinnow but if it’s a metaphor then the non-existence of literal giants isn’t relevant
@theothersimo @staidwinnow I hope I’m not tilting at windmills here, but I would suggest the non-existence of evil giants is relevant to this metaphor because the evil giants are a metaphor for things that don't exist.
@conlan @staidwinnow pretty dumb metaphor then isn’t it?
Jargoggles@theothersimo @conlan @staidwinnow
In the story, Don Quixote has read so many fictional, romanticized tales about chivalry and knights that he deluded himself into thinking he's living out those stories.
The metaphor is appropriate because we're being asked to consider a completely delusional imaginary threat as just as viable as something perfectly explainable which requires no action to be taken. We can also assume that the whole debate is taking attention from real problems.
@jargoggles @conlan @staidwinnow I can’t imagine this line of logic ever being used in good faith, but I can remember many, many scenarios when science deniers used similar arguments as part of their Gish gallop. Just like Underpants Gnomes is never used in good faith but only to beg the question. Conspiracy theories can’t be real because conspiracy theories aren’t real.
@theothersimo @conlan @staidwinnow
The entire Republican social platform can be summed up as tilting at windmills. They invent imaginary issues to constantly have something to fight against.
It can also be as simple as something like science denialism. Just because conservatives live in some alternate reality where science is whatever is convenient for them at the time doesn't mean we have to treat it as a valid point of view that's worth debating.
@jargoggles @conlan @staidwinnow or as I already said, it’s a really goddsmn fucking dumb metaphor. Cute cartoon though I guess.
@conlan @staidwinnow “I’ve already drawn you as the ̶S̶o̶y̶ ̶w̶o̶j̶a̶c̶k̶ giant so you ̶L̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶g̶u̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶ are worried about something that doesn’t exist”
Lizard@theothersimo @staidwinnow @conlan @Popehat
I thought the message pf the Underwear Gnomes was that most dotcom startups have no actual business plan.