Point is that a Cracked article written by a white man is never going to be a good place to learn about the concept of privilege, regardless of said man's stance on it.
I think there are white men who could possibly explain it well enough. I severely doubt Gladstone's that man. Even his less serious Cracked articles are...not good.
Point is that a Cracked article written by a white man is never going to be a good place to learn about the concept of privilege, regardless of said man's stance on it.
That's not wrong - assuming that man is straight, cisgender, not an ethnic or religious minority, poor, whatever, which might be a decent assumption with Cracked but isn't a decent assumption in general - but that's not what I was addressing, nor what the article in question was addressing, as badly/blandly-phrased as it was.
The point is that telling someone to "check [their] privilege" in a good-faith argument is the worst possible way to address possible privilege-based biases.
the "Cracked article" part was the more important modifier there.
Cracked is sometimes funny or interesting, but it's very rarely genuinely informative. The "serious" articles are essentially Buzzfeed-style clickbait and are among the worst on the site.
Point is that a Cracked article written by a white man is never going to be a good place to learn about the concept of privilege, regardless of said man's stance on it.
I think there are white men who could possibly explain it well enough. I severely doubt Gladstone's that man. Even his less serious Cracked articles are...not good.
Damnitall, you just made my point better than I did.
As important as self-reflection is in overcoming personal issues, assuming that a belief must be rooted in enforced cultural biases doesn't give the person making the argument much credit, for good or for ill. Bringing someone through Socratic argument to a point where they must confront what makes them believe something is much more effective at changing someone's opinion than telling them that they're privileged and wrong - particularly given that if this person is even engaging you on your own terms on a matter of bigotry, they are probably open to being shown another side to the story, as opposed to a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary who will just shout you down for not being like them.
I'm not sure that I'm articulating this very well.
No, I think I see what you're saying. I think Socratically bringing someone around can only go so far though, because in some cases the problem is genuinely outside their experience. A knee-jerk response is no good either, of course, but something like (for example) "Hey, voter ID laws might not seem like a big problem to you, but for a lot of people the amount of money and effort required to get an ID is not negligible" is quicker and more effective than going through the Socratic method to get to that conclusion.
So I agree that the phrase "check your privilege" shouldn't be used like a buzzword, but I think the basic idea is still sound.
And I agree, but simply telling someone, "You're wrong," rather than giving a little explanation in a diplomatic fashion - as you so elegantly demonstrated - is not going to convince the person to see it your way. Which was what I was trying to say, I guess.
I'm just tired of people shooting themselves in the foot by screaming about how much they hate people less oppressed than them and alienating potential allies instead of engaging people on an equal footing.
The issue is that Tumblr is not a medium conducive to discussion, so rather than attempting a dialogue all the information that gets spread relies on platitudes that might have some truth in them but are rendered entirely worthless through overuse and misapplication, and the attempts to find any definite, easy answers in a field as vague and difficult as social justice are kind of fruitless in and of themselves. Which is bad enough, but Tumblr has also decided if you don't hold view x, y, and z you're a terrible person.
I'm not just talking about Tumblr. People want easy answers to hard questions in general. But Tumblr as a platform is indeed non-conducive to that form of discourse.
I have seen good Tumblr conversations, though, mostly in following Aondeug, Rumetzen and Zersk.
Yeah, Reddit is just horrifying in some quarters, and Facebook has some nasty people. With Tumblr at least most of the annoying people have decent opinions badly expressed instead of awful, actively destructive ones.
Tumblr's model tends to encourage knee-jerk "me-too"-ism, mobbing, and shallow interaction. Reddit encourages closed circle-jerking groups. Twitter encourages banality in 140 characters. It's not so much about different people as rather the social model of the different services makes certain behaviors easier and some harder.
Most of the Tumblr people I disagree with I think are ultimately harmless though the anti-brony clique there has done some obnoxious RL things to people. Mostly it's people in the larval stages of their world awareness, who should really be taking their baby steps in radicalism in the safe confines of student politics or something. There are some truly nasty people, but they're fairly few.
I don't really understand what you're asking me to do here.
If I don't express my frustrations I can never find out if they're valid, for one thing. And mentioning them here usually helps me understand why they bother me.
Well, usually they are valid things to be bugged about in that they are unpleasant things that people say or do, but posting them here never seems to lead to a positive or meaningful discussion without a lot of hemming and hawing beforehand and I think that most of us would really rather be talking about positive things that we found on Tumblr as opposed to the annoying stuff that we try to avoid when we are on the site itself.
Usually I post about stuff like that here because if I post about it on Tumblr it'll lead to issues, but I do need to talk about it in some capacity. I've been attempting to dial down on it, though mostly unsuccessfully.
And it's not like I was the one who brought it up this time.
I would rather people didn't drag that stuff here in general; you just do it a lot more often than most, and I'm curious as to why you don't try to address it with these people if it really genuinely upsets you.
You can't just keep avoiding confrontations over things that upset you, after all, especially if you consider these people your friends.
What am I supposed to do, though? The reason I don't bother talking about this stuff is because it seems really deeply rooted in what these people consider morally right. What the hell can I do to address that?
Also I don't always avoid confrontation- honestly I'm a pretty confrontational person- but it does tend to stress me out a lot and having a place to vent helps me not get anxiety whenever I see a friend do something I don't like.
More people have said that and been killed than there are thorium decay products.
Someone captioned a glow stick in a Mountain Dew bottle with instructions on how to make a corrosive bottle bomb, claiming it will create a glowing bottle lamp. Why would anyone do this.
Macklemore dressed up as a Jewish stereot--wait that one actually happened, though I think it was after tumblr as a whole gave up on making fun of him?
That one seemed more a result of dim-wittedness. He said he didn't realize what the costume was, which doesn't seem like the kind of excuse a person would use to cover their ass.
Whatever TVT does internally, I'm sure Vanilla does it a whole lot better...gimme a sec.
Basically, the idea as Tach explained it was along the lines of this: Each thread created is literally a separate branch of the site rather than a subdivision of the forum - which only indexes and collates the threads - so as to reduce the strain on the server and do some other stuff. Maybe I'm forgetting the details or mixing them up, but that sounded like an interesting arrangement, hypothetically speaking.
"Interesting", maybe, but it wasn't my intention to defend the arrangement, simply to present Eddie's own arguments in support of it.
I don't know much about coding, but as I understand it, it was a pretty sloppy and inefficient way of running things.
it was a pretty sloppy and inefficient way of running things.
That... would be an understatement. It's a little like, I dunno how best to put it. Like trying to do a Powerpoint presentation, but every slide is on a different system.
They covered their asses, but what audiences are getting during the wild horses scene is "how weird and creepy are men who want to be women!"
I took something different away from it entirely, but maybe that's just because I don't think that way in the first place - and maybe because I used to read a lot about serial killers and abnormal psychology. Yes, it's creepy and a little sad, but not because of that, at least for me.
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Cracked is sometimes funny or interesting, but it's very rarely genuinely informative. The "serious" articles are essentially Buzzfeed-style clickbait and are among the worst on the site.
fwiw I'm listening and think that I agree provided that I understand you correctly
It certainly has its problems, but they are not problems on the scale of say, reddit's.
Also I don't always avoid confrontation- honestly I'm a pretty confrontational person- but it does tend to stress me out a lot and having a place to vent helps me not get anxiety whenever I see a friend do something I don't like.
Ockham's Razor and all that
I think Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster are great in it, and it's a well made movie, but holy fuck is it transphobic.
leland
leland what are u doin
leland stahp
I don't know much about coding, but as I understand it, it was a pretty sloppy and inefficient way of running things.