Nuts to you!!

July 7, 2012 9:13 AM

So suggesting castrating male bankers is acceptable now? Good to know. I'll be sure to suggest similar solutions to other problems.

Really is this much above suggestion we kill and eat the rich? I know some lovely sweetbread recipes. Testicles aren't that different.

posted by JPD to Etiquette/Policy at 9:13 AM (199 comments total)

Recipes aren't allowed in MeTas anymore.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:14 AM on July 7, 2012 [51 favorites]

so, you had a problem with a joke that was pretty inevitable, given the framing of the FPP, and then you make pretty much the same joke?
posted by HuronBob at 9:15 AM on July 7, 2012 [8 favorites]

Really is this much above suggestion we kill and eat the rich?

Isn't that exact suggestion made in every banker topic, with varying degress of seriousness? What makes this one any different from any given Matt Taibbi link?
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:20 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

Really is this much above suggestion we kill and eat the rich?

It's sort of a tasteless joke but also kind of an inevitable and topic-specific one that doesn't appear to be an actual attempt to foment a ball-cutting crusade against actual people. I winced a little and rolled my eyes but that was honestly about the whole of my reaction to it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:21 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

If we are having a topic about how some genders aren't good at various jobs there are going to be silly jokes about sexual violence against that gender, stop overreacting to it.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 9:23 AM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Isn't that exact suggestion made in every banker topic, with varying degress of seriousness? What makes this one any different from any given Matt Taibbi link?

It's wrong there, it's wrong here.
posted by JPD at 9:26 AM on July 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

So suggesting castrating male bankers is acceptable now?

This sort of approach to Meta threads is not actually that helpful. If you have a question about how or why we make our decisions or how the community feels about a particular thing it's often better to just ask.

there are going to be silly jokes about sexual violence against that gender, stop overreacting to it.

Actually, jokes about sexual violence are generally speaking not okay which I think is why JPD is asking this question. However in a thread that blames testosterone for the issue at hand, there are going to be "Well let's stop the testosterone supply" comments. These went from hiring women, to hiring castratos to "let's castrate the bankers" which is basically at the "okay stop here" point as far as I am concerned. So we have this MeTa and if people don't stop we'll make them stop.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:27 AM on July 7, 2012 [6 favorites]

Really is this much above suggestion we kill and eat the rich?

To be fair, I think the rich would prefer this over raising their taxes.
posted by DU at 9:29 AM on July 7, 2012 [28 favorites]

If the bankers aren´t going to be castrated maybe they should be punched in the dick instead.
posted by adamvasco at 9:30 AM on July 7, 2012 [7 favorites]

Besides, it's obvious the solution should be to provide female bankers with testosterone injections-testosterone for all, I say.
posted by MoonOrb at 9:34 AM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wait, we aren't allowed to drop a thread appropriate Eat The Rich anymore? Damn it I knew we had to respect all the tribulations the rich have had to deal with for centuries, but maybe that's taking it a bit far.
posted by aspo at 9:38 AM on July 7, 2012 [13 favorites]

You're right. It's not funny. Castration is too good for them.
posted by crunchland at 9:39 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

1) Agreed, mine was an easy dumb joke that didn't do much to advance the conversation (I self-flagged for deletion, fwiw);

2) Castrating bankers is not necessarily "sexual violence" if castration is a voluntary condition of employment;

3) Chemical castration is a reversible (?) non-violent option for the squeamish or for those who only want to work in the industry for 10-15 years, make a killing, and retire to pursue their own interests;

4) admavasco's suggestion above really is advocating violence, and he should be ashamed.
posted by notyou at 9:40 AM on July 7, 2012

Besides, it's obvious the solution should be to provide female bankers with testosterone injections-testosterone for all, I say.

That's soshulism.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:40 AM on July 7, 2012

Can we eviscerate MetaTalk posters if the community decides it doesn't like the post?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:43 AM on July 7, 2012

What about women with high testosterone? They have to get the Caster Semenya treatment, right? As a voluntary condition of employment.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 9:45 AM on July 7, 2012

I think we should literally shoot them in the head.

WITH A HUG GUN
posted by BitterOldPunk at 9:45 AM on July 7, 2012 [11 favorites]

Can I disembowel those that I've had enough shit out of?
posted by jonmc at 9:45 AM on July 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

Can we eviscerate MetaTalk posters if the community decides it doesn't like the post?

Awesome.
posted by JPD at 9:47 AM on July 7, 2012

Castration certainly hasn't stopped Lord Varys from having high ambition.
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 9:52 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

If anyone really took this personally by virtue of being a banker, I'd say we need more balls in finance. Sew 'em on and chop 'em off again.
posted by kengraham at 9:53 AM on July 7, 2012

Can I disembowel those that I've had enough shit out of?

Yes, after you get the loan.
posted by clavdivs at 9:53 AM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Circumcisions for everyone and we can call it done.
posted by spitbull at 9:54 AM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Really is this much above suggestion we kill and eat the rich? I know some lovely sweetbread recipes. Testicles aren't that different.

Given your position that the castration joke is not ok, I don't see how your kill and eat people joke is ok. It's tasteless and hypocritical.
posted by J. Wilson at 9:55 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

I am ashamed. Truely ashamed for not stating my beliefs clearly to begin with. Castration / hyperbole; punching in the dick, too short.
What I really, really want to see is Public Humiliation for these shits, and the sooner the better. / dream.
posted by adamvasco at 9:55 AM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

My mother was a banker for twenty years and her father was the CEO of the state's largest bank and was on the board of a regional Fed. We were just talking the other day about how it's kind of a blessing that he died before he saw what banking became (he died in '74 at only 55) and how the whole ethos of banking, which he embodied, went from (banking) conservative and community-minded to (banking) reckless and soul-sucking corporate greed.

I favor the castration initiative, as long as it's not retroactive. Because that would be problematic for me.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:00 AM on July 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

It's tasteless and hypocritical.

Add a bit of lemon pepper, it should be fine.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:02 AM on July 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

Folks, the flip-side of sort of dumb jokes being not great but not necessarily an auto-delete in that thread if folks didn't keep running with it is that this really isn't a "so go crazy in here instead" proxy thread for it either. If folks want to talk about the how and why and so forth of what they see as problematic or not about the original comments, or I guess at some level about the cultural and socioeconomic framing behind it, that's okay but it'd be nice to not have this just turn into a string of hyperbolicker-than-thou stuff or whatever.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:05 AM on July 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

but it'd be nice to not have this just turn into a string of hyperbolicker-than-thou stuff or whatever.

Is that a bollocks pun? I thought better of you, cortex.
posted by nobody at 10:17 AM on July 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

silly jokes about sexual violence against that gender

There is no such thing as a silly joke about sexual violence.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:20 AM on July 7, 2012 [12 favorites]

I agree that people should try to be level when discussing this, even though it is a difficult topic given the circumstances. Though, to note, despite the high feelings I'm not aware that those working in the financial sectors had suffered much if any physical violence against them.
posted by Jehan at 10:21 AM on July 7, 2012

I was sort of disappointed because I'm fairly certain there are bankers on MetaFilter and who knows maybe some of them would have stopped in and dropped some insightful tidbits about risk culture and incentives in banking. I'm sure most of them would not have been in the mood after the castration comments though. Why would you bother to be sincere even in semi-anonymous setting when the mood in the room is a "let's mutilate their genitals" kind of sentiment.
posted by newg at 10:21 AM on July 7, 2012 [13 favorites]

So suggesting castrating male bankers is acceptable now? Good to know. I'll be sure to suggest similar solutions to other problems.

I'm puzzled and confused by this response, as it takes the comment in completely serious manner and proposes to suggest similar refrains in future threads. At best the comment is a small joke and whether one agrees that it's funny or should have even been made, it's hard to understand how someone would take the comment so literally and become angered by it. Then to make this hyperbolic MeTa, which implies that castration jokes are now totally fine, from a user who's been on the sight for eight years, smacks of performance art or something else bothering them and that particular comment being some sort of trigger point today.

Which is ok in the sense that we're all human and have off days. But it would be great if members could take a look at their own reactions before posting such contentious MeTa and decide if there's really a problem with the site or their particular reaction at a particular moment.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:29 AM on July 7, 2012 [10 favorites]

There is no such thing as a silly joke about sexual violence.

Sarcasm, however, is a thing.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 10:35 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

Yeah, that really messes up a thread and the conversation always goes downhill. People who work at banks or otherwise understand the situation deeply (even those who the bloody-minded might agree with if they ever paused to think) decide not to contribute because of it, and people who want to jump in and add their own sick fantasy feel encouraged to do so. Signal goes way down, noise goes way up, and the mods are cool with it. I always assumed it was because Metafilter is about the links, not the comments, so discourse can go to hell as long as the threats are against a bugbear most of us can agree on.

There's no real way of preventing people from displaying their inner Manson short of deleting comments, and I'm sure even with a note the thread would become a real headache if mods had to keep deleting all the violent fantasies and gratuitous threats.

There are users on this site who deserve decent discourse with a wider range of voices, but those voices are scared silent by bloodthirsty mobs who think it's funny to be glib about murder, mutilation, and sexual violence towards a supposedly sanctioned group. These idiots make it so the smart people don't get what they deserve.

In that way Metafilter reflects the wider society. More's the pity.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 10:51 AM on July 7, 2012 [18 favorites]

I don't approve. I'm more of the "string 'em up from lamposts" kind of guy. You know. A traditionalist.
posted by Decani at 10:53 AM on July 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

Why would you bother to be sincere even in semi-anonymous setting when the mood in the room is a "let's mutilate their genitals" kind of sentiment.

Of course, this wasn't the mood in the room, since no one was seriously suggesting that anyone mutilate bankers. Why would you imagine that anyone in that thread sincerely wants to hurt people in order to solve economic issues?

... those voices are scared silent by bloodthirsty mobs who think it's funny to be glib about murder, mutilation, and sexual violence towards a supposedly sanctioned group.

You have got to be kidding me. A joke about castration is displaying people's "inner Manson", like everyone who makes castration jokes secretly wants to murder "pigs" and blame minority groups in order to incite a race war. WTF.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:57 AM on July 7, 2012 [5 favorites]

Wait, when did we stop saying we should eat the rich? What if they're especially well-marbled?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:59 AM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: bloodthirsty mobs.... of idiots.

The irony is, you paid $5 to hang out with us! :)
posted by HuronBob at 11:00 AM on July 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

silly jokes about sexual violence against that gender

There is no such thing as a silly joke about sexual violence.

You didn't get the memo? Implications of sexual violence against men are ok here if they are funny or if the men were asking for it.

The whole thread should have gone. But maybe I'm just being hormonal, what with all the testosterone addling my brains.
posted by gjc at 11:01 AM on July 7, 2012 [8 favorites]

This thread is dumb.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:01 AM on July 7, 2012 [6 favorites]

In that way Metafilter reflects the wider society. More's the pity.

It's a real shame, and I agree that it is reflective of wider society. So many people have been harmed over the last few years by the actions of those working in finance that it becomes difficult to discuss calmly. I think there is a lot of hurt, and it would do good to acknowledge this. We can't continue with this abusive situation, with finance hurting society and society countering with aggression, even if it is only verbal, such as here on Metafilter.

Maybe those who work in finance can comment anonymously in economic related threads, so that the stigma doesn't attach to their user names? That would make it easier for them to speak openly about their situation, why they do what they do, and maybe come toward some kind of reconciliation through honesty. I would very much like for them to continue to comment, especially as it allows us an insight to their mind and character.
posted by Jehan at 11:05 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

But maybe I'm just being hormonal, what with all the testosterone addling my brains.

Word. Don't you fucking hate when people talk like that?!
posted by heyho at 11:06 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

A joke about castration is displaying people's "inner Manson", like everyone who makes castration jokes secretly wants to murder "pigs" and blame minority groups in order to incite a race war. WTF.

I agree that"inner Manson" was not a particularly good way of putting it, but there's more to understanding than simply reading. Try to think. You'll figure it out before too long.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 11:13 AM on July 7, 2012

This thread is only really dumb in the common sense world in which it is pointing at a deleted comment. It ought to have been unnecessary.

In our actual world, I find that I agree with JPD. Bankers as a class are not people who deserve to be the butt of your violent fantasies. Nor are rich people: just tax them, and stop bailing the out, for God's sake! If you have to hate someone to tax them or refuse them billions of dollars in subsidies, you're doing it wrong.

Mods, it's not too late to make this thread dumb. All you have to do is delete the comment! Then we can swap recipes.
posted by anotherpanacea at 11:21 AM on July 7, 2012

That joke wasn't appropriate, funny, cool, or advancing the discussion.

The thinly veiled accusations of double standards about jokes about sexual violence here are not appropriate, funny, cool, or advancing the discussion.

Mods, I think the castration joke needs to go from the main thread both because it's shitty and inappropriate, and also because it is clearly going to lead to a cascade of "double standard feminist hive mind hypocrisy men are discriminated against here" garbage here in this thread and ad nauseam until something else inappropriate someone says about some man once again triggers the "double standard feminist hive mind men are discriminated against here" refrain.

It is too fucking hot for another round of passive-aggressive gender wars on MeFi.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:25 AM on July 7, 2012 [20 favorites]

This thread is only really dumb in the common sense world in which it is pointing at a deleted comment.

Wait, what the holy fuck? The comment was deleted anyway? Jesus Christ, what the hell is up with all the accusations of double standards, discrimination against men, blah blah blah, then?
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:26 AM on July 7, 2012

The comment is still there, anotherpanacea. It needs to be deleted. Threats of gendered violence against people of any gender always need to be deleted. Mods, seriously, delete the comment. Don't take this as the hill you want to die on. Yeah, some man had a theory about testosterone but that doesn't make the joke okay in any way.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:28 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

Err... Sorry, Sidhedevil: that was my point. ("It's not too late to make this thread dumb.")
posted by anotherpanacea at 11:30 AM on July 7, 2012

I agree that"inner Manson" was not a particularly good way of putting it, but there's more to understanding than simply reading. Try to think. You'll figure it out before too long.

If one's comment comment consists solely of first admitting they didn't communicate well, castigating a reader to think beyond reading and comprehension to under the comment, then one should work on communicating their ideas in a better manner.

Or go to the park. Maybe catch a movie. Avengers is good, as is Snow White and the Huntsman. Searching for a Friend of the World can wait until DVD though.

and also because it is clearly going to lead to a cascade of "double standard feminist hive mind hypocrisy men are discriminated against here" garbage here in this thread and ad nauseam until something else inappropriate someone says about some man once again triggers the "double standard feminist hive mind men are discriminated against here" refrain

Well yes, let's pander to the crowd.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:30 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

Flagging works.

Also am now firmly resolved to refrain from posting about my own work.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:31 AM on July 7, 2012

This post isn't dumb. This thread is.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:33 AM on July 7, 2012 [5 favorites]

Sorry, anotherpanacea, I get what you were getting at now.

Here is why that isn't a funny over-the-top Swiftian joke: people actually do get castrated by the justice systems of soi-disant "progressive" countries. It's not funny to joke about inflicting draconian punishments that actually happen (albeit for sexual offenses, not for economic offenses, at least at the moment).

That comment makes the baby Alan Turing cry.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:35 AM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Would this even be a discussion if the post were about inner city African American youth violence? So i guess it's cool now for me to suggest that? Actually artificial insemination aside, castration is a cure for all social ills except perhaps continuing our existence. The true Final Solution would be to sterilize woman too. If I'm pissed enough about any issue, you, the presence of this post is m
posted by astrobiophysican at 11:39 AM on July 7, 2012

y green light. (phone post).
posted by astrobiophysican at 11:40 AM on July 7, 2012

If one's comment comment consists solely of first admitting they didn't communicate well, castigating a reader to think beyond reading and comprehension to under the comment, then one should work on communicating their ideas in a better manner.

"Comment comment" and "under" are at hilarious odds with your swipe about better communicating. Thank you, I needed a good laugh.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 11:41 AM on July 7, 2012

This is why I favor fair trials and jail terms for the corrupt bankers.

There are female bankers, by the way.
posted by spitbull at 11:42 AM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

They're called banquettes.
posted by box at 11:56 AM on July 7, 2012

Here is why that isn't a funny over-the-top Swiftian joke: people actually do get castrated by the justice systems of soi-disant "progressive" countries. It's not funny to joke about inflicting draconian punishments that actually happen (albeit for sexual offenses, not for economic offenses, at least at the moment).

California?
posted by Jehan at 12:00 PM on July 7, 2012

It's always a little weird to delete something that people are actively discussing but none of us were really prepared to defend it on its merits, so, done.

Would this even be a discussion if the post were about inner city African American youth violence?

If one thing were something else, then everything would be different. We really don't play the comparative game here at all - it doesn't do anything useful.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 12:14 PM on July 7, 2012 [14 favorites]

Flagging works.

And, yeah, not much flagging before this Metatalk post went up and no contact form action meant that the normal sort of feedback mechanism there did not signal us with any supplemental Strong Feelings About This stuff. I feel a bit weird about nixing the comments at this point when it means pulling another several followups out of the thread as well and leaving a Metatalk thread talking about something that's not there anymore, but it seems like it's something some folks are feeling pretty not okay about so that may be the way to go here in any case.

All that said, I think it's problematic to go down the "what if it were a different subject with a wildly different social/historical context" road on this stuff because, you know, it's completely not that. The argument by analogy side is rocky and we'd much rather folks deal with what actually was said than what might have in a different, worse universe have been said.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:16 PM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

How about a swim?

Pacu, Testicle-Eating Fish Species, Caught In Lake Lou Yaeger In Illinois.
posted by ericb at 12:19 PM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

I agree that"inner Manson" was not a particularly good way of putting it, but there's more to understanding than simply reading. Try to think. You'll figure it out before too long.

So, knee-jerk hyperbole is supposed to be a subtle and nuanced rhetorical device? I'm going to disagree with that and suggest subtlety and nuance as more effective tools if you want people to plumb the limnology of your opinion on bloodthirsty internet rants.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:26 PM on July 7, 2012

What?!! How dare you delete my...

Kidding.

It was a dumb, obvious joke, and I'm happy to have it stricken from the record. I do not actually advocate the castration of financial professionals, and I apologize to anyone whose feelings were hurt by that idea.
posted by neroli at 12:33 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also known as Rockefeller Oysters, amongst the intelligentsia.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:48 PM on July 7, 2012 [6 favorites]

So, knee-jerk hyperbole is supposed to be a subtle and nuanced rhetorical device? I'm going to disagree with that and suggest subtlety and nuance as more effective tools if you want people to plumb the limnology of your opinion on bloodthirsty internet rants.

Keep at it, you'll figure it out eventually.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 12:49 PM on July 7, 2012

Seriously, some people in this thread are approaching "Why isn't there a white history month" territory. Bankers are not put upon, are not disadvantaged and just trying to survive, are not routinely slut shamed, are not kept in check by a constant low grade threats of violence, sexual or otherwise. And so on.

The unoppressed using analogies to the oppressed to attack something is a bullshit tactic that cheapens real problems. It leads to thinking along the lines of "Hey, if I make a tasteless joke about castrating bankers, it's the same as if I was making a tasteless joke about castrating black men, and honestly, I don't think that a tasteless joke about castrating bankers is dangerous, so therefore neither is that bad."
posted by aspo at 1:36 PM on July 7, 2012 [11 favorites]

I know this has kind of been said, and I hate to be the guy who's all "THIS META SHOULDN'T EXIST" and everything, but.

I think it's kind of a personal-human-interaction thing. It's really easy on the internet to take this kind of sarcastic distance from things as they actually occur, to step back from a conversation and extrapolate, and then to react in a way that seems safe. To step back from this and say loudly, "so now this is okay, eh?" is to choose a safer route toward bringing up an issue, a route that requires less personal involvement – but I'm not sure it's more effective. Yes, it takes a few more moments, a bit more resolve, and perhaps a little more willingness to commit to resolution, to write up a little note to the mods that says I saw this in a thread, and it kind of bothers me; is this something Team Mod is okay with? – but ultimately, writing that kind of note, and having that kind of interaction, can usually resolve this stuff quicker, or at least give you a better idea of what's going on.

Otherwise, really, you're just assuming that everything that appears on the site currently is okay with the mods. And experience shows that that's not always a fair assumption to make. Sometimes a note asking a few simple questions can save a huge amount of time, and can be much more informative to boot.
posted by koeselitz at 1:38 PM on July 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

(Oh and also very important. Being a banker is A CHOICE, and a very freely made one at that.)
posted by aspo at 1:40 PM on July 7, 2012

Just because male bankers are not routinely oppressed by the threat of sexual violence doesn't mean that jokes about sexual violence are okay as long as you approve of the target of those jokes. It's why "lol don't drop the soap" jokes in crime- and prison-themed threads are also not okay. Jokes about sexual violence don't suddenly become okay if you disclaim that you're just being ironic/sarcastic/too cool for schol, geez. Hyperbolic jokes about sexual violence normalize sexual violence, and makes the overall atmosphere less welcoming to people who have been victimized, male or female.

Pretending that one shitty comment someone left that didn't get cleaned up in time is somehow symptomatic of a sitewide effort to silence Teh Menz is gross and in bad faith.
posted by Phire at 1:49 PM on July 7, 2012 [8 favorites]

Pretending that one shitty comment someone left that didn't get cleaned up in time is somehow symptomatic of a sitewide effort to silence Teh Menz is gross and in bad faith.

Huh? That's pretty much the opposite of what I'm claiming.

And don't "don't drop the soap" jokes are horrible because prison rape is a real thing, a serious thing, and happening because people tolerate if not outright condone it. Trying to equate this comment with prison rape jokes is exactly the false analogy I was talking about.
posted by aspo at 1:52 PM on July 7, 2012 [6 favorites]

Well, I work in banking. And I'm a female fwiw. I am not a banker but I work in investments which is pretty much the same field. Feel like I am stating the obvious here, but finance is a HUGE and very broad field and the people that everyone loves to hate are an incredibly small proportion of the entire industry. You might be surprised how little of my time is spent screwing over innocent and unsuspecting customers, counting my money and laughing and partying on my yacht (hint: none of it). Not that it matters to people who want to get their hate on for the entire industry. Which is a bummer because I almost totally agree with their sentiment. I think that banks should be much more regulated. I think we need to seriously consider bringing back Glass-Steagall. I think that multi million dollar bonuses are insane and that traders are poorly incentivized. I think CEOs who mismanage massive global firms into the brink of collapse shouldn't be rewarded (although of course this is not something that is just a banking sector issue).

I totally get the anger that people have at the banking industry. I totally get it and I also agree with a lot of it. But I don't really participate in banking threads because there is often not that much in them that is substantive and they sometimes turn into a free for all for people to hate the industry rather than an enlightening discussion on whatever the topic is. That thread was a good example on what could have been a really interesting discussion on the role of gender and risk taking. I've read similar things before and there were some good comments in there which explore the issue more deeply but amongst that there was a lot of bullshit noise which was basically LOLGREEDYBANKERS. Which is annoying because it's an otherwise good subject that I would love to see some thoughtful discussion on but which is derailed by some dumb comments that add absolutely nothing.

It kind of seems to me that there are a few topics which are always going to have people jumping in with crappy blanket statements that kind of ruin any thoughtful discussion on anything. Banking, cops and the South are a few off the top of my head. I really wish we could discuss these things in a calm and rational way without resorting to "castrate them!" and "lolrednecks!" jokes.
posted by triggerfinger at 2:44 PM on July 7, 2012 [32 favorites]

You might be surprised how little of my time is spent screwing over innocent and unsuspecting customers, counting my money and laughing and partying on my yacht (hint: none of it).

If you ever get an urge to fill a swimming pool full of money and dive into it, don't.
posted by XMLicious at 2:59 PM on July 7, 2012

nthing that the prison rape joke analogy is stupid. Prisoners are among the most marginalized victims of the whole dubious mass-society experiment, and it turns out that sexual assault in prison is both rampant and sort of built into the system as a fucked-up, sadistic means of social control.

Moreover, prison rape jokes are generally not actually jokes -- they generally have subtextual metadata about how the joke-teller thinks that prisoners deserve to be sexually assaulted, and that the threat of sexual assault is a legitimate means of maintaining the type of social order acceptable to police unions, corporate beneficiaries of prison labor, and overprotective parents. Prison rape jokes are about reinforcing the claim that we, as a society, have got things so perfectly right that a legitimate reward for deviance is de facto-officially sanctioned violence and humiliation. This is flawed and evil and dangerous.

On the other hand, the original castration joke obviously does not carry the same subtextual baggage, because (a) it is reasonable to assume that its teller does not actually condone castration of bankers, (b) rather than being among society's most marginalized, the targets of that joke are among society's most powerful and privileged, and indeed are actively involved in perpetuating structural and cultural features of society that contribute to the type of oppression exemplified by prisons. The difference is large enough to render the analogy obviously shitty.

That's not to say that the joke probably should have stopped there, rather than resulting in a massive derail or, indeed, a MeTa, and that's also not to say that the joke should not have been deleted; quiet deletion seems perfectly reasonable.
posted by kengraham at 3:12 PM on July 7, 2012 [13 favorites]

"That's not to say that the joke should *not* have stopped there..."



Actually, people who tell prison rape jokes are fascist abusers of social power and, consequently, should have their junk chopped off.
posted by kengraham at 3:13 PM on July 7, 2012

And don't "don't drop the soap" jokes ...

No soap radio! ; )
posted by ericb at 3:28 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

This comment deletion stuff is getting right the fuck out of hand now.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:22 PM on July 7, 2012 [6 favorites]

Wow delete fail. Come on guys wtf?
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 4:29 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

FYI: Asking about sexism is a "rant" now.
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 4:33 PM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

This comment deletion stuff is getting right the fuck out of hand now.

Seriously. I've been feeling this way for a while now, but I think the mods need to lay off a bit. And before someone trots out the "deleted comments are still about the same percentage" comment that is the standard response, remember that MetaFilter is very good at self policing which means that deletions should be going steadily down. Yes, there may be just as many deletions as 4-5 years ago, but the deletion threshold is WAY up.
posted by aspo at 4:34 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

This is the kind of thread that makes people turn republican.
posted by jonmc at 4:42 PM on July 7, 2012 [6 favorites]

You might be surprised how little of my time is spent screwing over innocent and unsuspecting customers, counting my money and laughing and partying on my yacht

something something banality of evil. Listen I know most people in the industry aren't the ones personally doing the screwing, but if your are in the industry you are sure as hell facilitating the screwing.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 4:47 PM on July 7, 2012

Yeah, better go get those tellers first. Specially the automated ones.
posted by jonmc at 4:49 PM on July 7, 2012 [5 favorites]

MetaFilter is very good at self policing

lol.

New users arrive steadily, which means a constant stream of people who are unused to the house style, community values, and posting norms.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:51 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

and to echo what sidhedevil said upthread, it's about 9 billion degrees out and yesterday at work our AC's condenser blew and we spent several hours doing customer service in a sauna and dealing with lots of heavy duty human funk (no not the good kind), plus a co-worker of mine somehow managed to slice his arm open getting something out of the employee fridge and bled all over everybody's lunch (he's fine, thankfully). So, I (and I think many others) are mot in the mood for a lot of overheated rhetoric. Thanks.
posted by jonmc at 4:54 PM on July 7, 2012

Hai everyone, should I submit my job and vital stats to this thread soit can be figured out how evil/evil enabler i am and if I can be jokinglt threatened or not?
posted by Snyder at 4:54 PM on July 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

Snyder, that actually leads me to make a rather (I thought) obvious observation: being a member of a 'priviliged' group is no reason not to expect a certain amount of basic decency and being a member of an 'oppressed' group (or merely being 'right')is not an excuse to act like an asshole.
posted by jonmc at 4:57 PM on July 7, 2012 [5 favorites]

Snyder, that actually leads me to make a rather (I thought) obvious observation: being a member of a 'priviliged' group is no reason not to expect a certain amount of basic decency and being a member of an 'oppressed' group (or merely being 'right')is not an excuse to act like an asshole.

The converse -- i.e. being a member of an oppressed group is no reason not to deserve a certain amount of basic decency and being a member of a privileged group is not an excuse to act like an asshole -- is the one that needs to be more often observed.
posted by junco at 5:04 PM on July 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

The converse -- i.e. being a member of an oppressed group is no reason not to deserve a certain amount of basic decency and being a member of a privileged group is not an excuse to act like an asshole -- is the one that needs to be more often observed.

I'd be perfectly cool with both being observed, but again I figured that would be rather obvious.
posted by jonmc at 5:06 PM on July 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

New users arrive steadily, which means a constant stream of people who are unused to the house style, community values, and posting norms.

That's why Metatalk exists. The experiment worked well for years, when the site ran at a smaller scale. It's a goddamned shame we've grown as much as we have, and have to have moderators, but it is the way things have gone, and the ones we have are very good, except, perhaps, for what seems to me to be a worrisome growing itchiness of their deletion trigger fingers.

So save your lols for somewhere where loling is appropriate, perhaps. You're new, nobody expects you to know the whole history of the place. But there's no need to actively parade your ignorance of it.

Self-policing isn't something that happens here any more (and whether it ever did is arguable), admittedly, and the shift that I predicted (in far too many words far too many times back in the day when moderation and flagging and all that began) to an appeal-to-authority model where people no longer take as much personal responsibility for their words because the structure of the thing does not encourage doing so (by the very nature of the appeal-to-authority itself): well, that's pretty much come to pass.

So now we have this kind of thing going on, this thread here and its results, which I find orders of magnitude more offensive and upsetting than any dumb comment about cutting the nuts off some bankers. So it goes.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:07 PM on July 7, 2012 [5 favorites]

The experiment worked well for years, when the site ran at a smaller scale. It's a goddamned shame we've grown as much as we have

This is dead on. Ironically when the site was smaller and depended on people wandering in, we had morediversity of opinions, tastes, whatever. Now that we're well known, we have a 'demographic.'
posted by jonmc at 5:10 PM on July 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

Here is a short, exciting film that I made for you while sitting in my garage.
posted by Burhanistan at 5:15 PM on July 7, 2012

cortex, I for one didn't flag the comment before this because I didn't read the comment because I didn't read the thread because I hate threads about evolutionary psychology and all its allied non-sciences, and because I hate "Rawr, bankers!" threads and this just seemed like a thread where the tendentious chocolate would get into the polarized peanut butter and who needed that.

But I did flag the comment once I saw it because it comes off as outrageous and divisive and displaying gendered prejudice, even though I doubt that that was neroli's intent at all (I am generally a huge fan of neroli's postings!)
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:16 PM on July 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

This video is private.
If the owner of this video has granted you access, please log in.


We cannot bask in the excitement. Sadness! unless it was just for jon.
posted by winna at 5:18 PM on July 7, 2012

I got the same message.
posted by jonmc at 5:19 PM on July 7, 2012

It was a short exciting film for no one, then!
posted by winna at 5:22 PM on July 7, 2012

Oh, fixed. It's only notable because I didn't flinch a micron.
posted by Burhanistan at 5:23 PM on July 7, 2012

Whoa it is there now and is indeed exciting.

In a world of red cars, the SKY GOES MAD.
posted by winna at 5:23 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

I don't really participate in banking threads because there is often not that much in them that is substantive

God that's an understatement. Metafilter is never more uninformed, judgmental, or facile than in threads about finance, banking, or economics. Seriously, it's like there's a switch that flps the quality to newspaper-commenting level in those threads.

As someone with a passing interest in those industries, who values the contribution from mefites who know something about the topic, I find it an endless source of frustration that those threads (esp banking) inevitable devolve into some kind of Left-wing Tea Party Lolztacular Mob bullshit, like every single time.

I completely understand why anyone with an association with those industries - or anyone really - would balk at trying to say something substantive in those threads, they are inevitable howled down by an angry cadre. Those left remaining are the more, shall we say, right-of-centre mefites, and the threads inevitable devolve into juvenile HURF DURF or ideological trench warfare and the opportunity for interesting discussion is lost.

I would love it if the mods were more active in those threads; flags or no, I don't really see why they should viewed as a good space for Mefite Joke Olympics or talkback radio level discourse. My theory for the lack of flags is that people who would once have been inclined to read them - like myself - don't bother now.
posted by smoke at 5:24 PM on July 7, 2012 [23 favorites]

.
posted by jonmc at 5:25 PM on July 7, 2012

Can you just submit another couple hours of film? Would be great to go to sleep to (no surprise zombies at the end unless you're so inclined).
posted by arcticseal at 5:26 PM on July 7, 2012

(sorry if I was a little nasty above. really hard couple days)
posted by jonmc at 5:42 PM on July 7, 2012

Metafilter is never more uninformed, judgmental, or facile than in threads about finance, banking, or economics
Owing a business is also a great topic for the cranky. And then, of course, being a successful free-lancer is just inviting scorn.
posted by Ideefixe at 5:45 PM on July 7, 2012

My theory for the lack of flags is that people who would once have been inclined to read them - like myself - don't bother now.

I'm in the same boat. I read the interesting articles in threads about economics but don't read the threads anymore, because invariably there are a small group of people who feel the need to make the same comments about the entire area of economics as early as they possibly can to derail.

After wading in to a couple of those and flagging, I realized there really isn't room for actual discussion in a place where people feel the need to shout each other down. I now just read the source material.
posted by Rodrigo Lamaitre at 5:47 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yes, there may be just as many deletions as 4-5 years ago, but the deletion threshold is WAY up.

Down.

Or your argument makes no sense.

Metafilter is never more uninformed, judgmental, or facile than in threads about finance, banking, or economics.

Ehhh. It's going to be pointless expecting that any banking thread is going to be unemotional, since what's happening in the real world is so goddamn awful. People are angry, frustrated and largely powerless, so if somebody blows off steam by dreaming off castrating a few of the fuckers, if that's hurts, that's sad, but at this point any banker should be glad that it's been only harsh words and insults, not stones and bullets slung at them.

Storm in a teacup is what comes to mind regarding the original complaint.

Ironically when the site was smaller and depended on people wandering in, we had morediversity of opinions, tastes, whatever. Now that we're well known, we have a 'demographic.'

That's inevitable with any long running site/community: the first couple of years are about finding its voice, then you get the slow evolution towards a more or less stable community and the people who don't find it interesting anymore drift off.

Diversity of opinion is overrated anyway.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:48 PM on July 7, 2012

laconic skeuomorph: FYI: Asking about sexism is a "rant" now.

Your AskMe question "asking about sexism" came on the heels of your comment in this thread. Ninety minutes and several dozen comments into a conversation about control issues in the OP's relationship, not all of which had to do with shoes, you made a comment about how your mother taught you that high-heeled shoes were a tool of the patriarchy, that maybe OP's boyfriend had some issue about high heels, and that they should have a conversation about it. Somebody else took issue with your answer, and restless_nomad deleted both your comment and the comment of the person pushing back against you.

Within 15 minutes of that comment deletion, your Ask went up.

In that context, I think the mod's rationale for deleting your Ask is sound. It's not super-answerable -- but even if it were, the timing of your question supports a reasonable inference of less-than-good faith on your part.
posted by bakerina at 6:01 PM on July 7, 2012 [22 favorites]

Bakerina pretty much outlined what was going on there, with the additional caveat that if the framing had been both more neutral and more specific, it might well have stood. Putting in your strongest-possible-terms position statement in the question itself really didn't make it look much like you wanted to hear a range of answers on the subject.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 6:11 PM on July 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

I would love it if the mods were more active in those threads; flags or no, I don't really see why they should viewed as a good space for Mefite Joke Olympics or talkback radio level discourse.

But it doesn't work as a "flags or no" thing. It has to, in fact, be a "flags, yes" thing or a contact form thing. Asking us to take proactive action to carefully watch threads no one has pointed us toward is unreasonable. To the extent that we know some topics are likely to be bumpier than others we already try to do a little bit of situational preemptive monitoring of trouble threads but that's asking a lot already.

And I think it sucks that people are lazy or invective-prone in some threads about charged or popularly divisive subjects. I really, honestly do. It's not what I like about Metafilter. But there's a requirement of equal parts folks making an effort to not suck and people making the effort to let us know when something's going bad for us to effectively deal with stuff when it comes up. People responding multiplex to something problematic while not flagging it is basically a recipe for a clusterfuck like this where something middlingly problematic yields both people hollering that we didn't take action immediately based on no input and also people hollering after the fact that we dared to take action after a bunch of feedback.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:17 PM on July 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

Self-policing isn't something that happens here any more (and whether it ever did is arguable)

I think this depends a ton on what the definition of "self-policing" is, and I bet we have as many definitions as there are mefites in this thread. Self-policing can mean any or all: flagging; using the contact form; starting a meTa; arguing about the perceived misbehavior or word choice of a user in the thread, creating a tangent/derail.

As to whether it used to happen: we can go back in the archives and look; it's mostly all there. One thing that still surprises me when I poke around in threads from, say, pre-2006 (when I joined) is how much shorter they are. An fpp from 2003/4 about something contentious might get 80 comments; today, it gets that in the first 15 minutes.

Here's the front page from July 7, 2003. Please note that there are not one but two posts about Michael Savage saying something douchey. Together, their comments don't even break 200. These days, neither would be likely to survive at all because people would flag the shit out of them. For which I'm grateful.
posted by rtha at 6:18 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

In another MetaTalk thread recently, Jessamyn mentioned to a member that she was hesitant to talk about his/her deleted comment unless he/she really wanted to have that conversation in public. That struck me as a really good way to handle it. By contrast, I'm not especially enthused about the idea of non-moderators confronting other members about their deleted comments.
posted by cribcage at 6:25 PM on July 7, 2012

> I know some lovely sweetbread recipes. Testicles aren't that different.

You're going to be pretty disappointed if you use a sweetbread recipes to prepare testicles, they're pretty damn different in terms of flavor and cooking time.
posted by desuetude at 6:28 PM on July 7, 2012

laconic skeuomorph brought it up here, in public - that opens it for discussion, from my perspective. And community discussion of mod actions is what this place is for. People are welcome to offer their own interpretations and we'll confirm or clarify as needed. If bakerina had been wrong, I would have been happy to say so in my comment, but it was a pretty clear chain of action.

We don't generally repaste deleted comments unless it becomes necessary, but that's not what happened here. Deleted posts, by their nature, are viewable.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 6:31 PM on July 7, 2012

Diversity of opinion is overrated anyway.

I disagree.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 6:31 PM on July 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I see somebody referencing Post A being deleted, and the response that comes back is, "Yeah, but that was only after you had Comment X deleted from Post B." If I'm misunderstanding then so be it, and if not then we can agree to disagree, but I don't see that reference to Post A as "bringing up" a deleted comment from a different thread.

Deleted posts are indeed viewable. Deleted comments are not. And I don't see a lot of difference between repasting the text versus describing, "Your deleted comment said thus and so." Again, it's something that I had previously noticed a moderator being cautious about doing, so when a non-mod does it I figured I'd see it deleted.
posted by cribcage at 6:45 PM on July 7, 2012

Yeah, better go get those tellers first. Specially the automated ones.

Have you ever tried chopping the genitalia off an ATM?
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 6:51 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Eh, certainly I can envision circumstances where I would. In this case, though, since there was a mod note that gave a pretty strong hint what was in the comment and then a question that largely restated it, it seems fruitless to try to keep it a secret.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 6:51 PM on July 7, 2012

I think this depends a ton on what the definition of "self-policing" is, and I bet we have as many definitions as there are mefites in this thread.

True, that. For what it's worth, my operating definition, in terms of Metafilter, is something along the lines of: bad behaviour by members is brought up and discussed in Metatalk. Users attempt help other users, particularly new ones, to understand and abide by the community standards that we as a community have coalesced around through previous Metatalk discussions. We avoid feeding trolls, we try not to reward bad actors. Users are responsible for their own words, and if they make an ass of themselves, those comments stand, and we know more about them as a consequence, even if it's now knowing that they can be assy. Their bad behaviour does not disappear from the site (and nor does ours), and if we assume good faith (a big assume, I know), then the end result tends to be less consequence-free-acting-out-because-mom-and-dad-will-clean-it-up-later.

It's not really all that different than what we have now -- the only real additions on top of it are active moderators and flagging to surface community disapproval. But much as I like and trust our mod team (which, again, we pretty much have to have because of the size of the community these days, I think), that top layer operates silently, which even after all these years, can make me a bit uncomfortable.

But I'm not calling for change here -- what we have is the best solution we could have, perhaps. It's just that there are consequences to it that are... suboptimal. That's the way of it with most things.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:52 PM on July 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

But I'm not calling for change here -- what we have is the best solution we could have, perhaps. It's just that there are consequences to it that are... suboptimal.

I feel you on that, certainly. It's really just a function of size - smaller conversations can route around damage in ways that larger conversations just can't, especially in this particular (linear, permanent) format. Metafilter is past the point where it can be a cozy everyone-knows-everyone environment where new people can be brought in gradually. There are just too many people coming in and out - if we didn't enforce site norms, the site would be notably changed (and not for the better, I think) by the sheer weight of new people.

I don't think a bigger, more heavily-moderated site better or worse, really, but it is different. I've worked on several points on the scale, and they all have their ups and downs. The advantage to keeping a bigger, more fluid site moderated is that you don't end up bowing under the weight of the Average User which leads to the sort of baseline internet horribleness that people make outragefilter posts about. I actually strongly disagree that the site is less diverse now than it used to be - at least, for some axes of diversity.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:01 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Metafilter is never more uninformed, judgmental, or facile than in threads about finance, banking, or economics....

As someone with a passing interest in those industries, who values the contribution from mefites who know something about the topic...

Before I read the second part, I figured it might be coming--I had a feeling that either you know a lot about finance, banking and economics, or those things are important to you.

This thing comes up sometimes--other people have the same opinion about threads about kink, or gender, or parenting, or hip-hop (that last one's mine). Sometimes, at least, I think it's less that Metafilter doesn't do a topic well and more that people, myself very much included, judge some topics by different standards than others.
posted by box at 7:29 PM on July 7, 2012

cribcage, for what it's worth (and I recognize that it might not be worth much), I agree with you that deleted comments are generally best left deleted. I also agree that jessamyn's position of "don't bring up deleted comments unless the person who made them really wants them made public" is generally a good rule to live by.

Here, though, the situation was different. laconic skeuomorph made a comment in an Ask thread, restless_nomad deleted it as a potential derail, and then laconic skeuomorph posted the nearly-identical comment as an Ask. Seriously, except for replacing "my mother" with "my parents," the second sentence of laconic skeuomorph's Ask is a replica of the first sentence in his deleted response in the other thread. It was only after his Ask was deleted that he brought it to MeTa, and, when the conversation turned to "these are not good deletions," linked his deleted Ask within a comment that "Asking about sexism is a rant now." Which is not what restless_nomad said, not at all, and I thought it was pretty uncool of laconic skeuomorph to say that it was.

Should I have just butted out and let the mods take care of it? Perhaps I should, and if they think my comment should go, I have no problem with their deleting it. But from where I was sitting at the time, I thought that this thread was veering toward another "too many deletions!"/"not enough deletions!" cage match, and I thought that reducing a decision that restless_nomad made pretty thoughtfully as "Asking about sexism is a rant now" was not a good-faith effort to participate in the conversation at hand.

Of course, the same could be said about my own reply to laconic skeuomorph. An argument can certainly be made that any reference to a deleted comment without the commenter's permission is prima facie bad faith. (I won't make that argument, because I don't agree with it, but I think an argument *can* be made.) And as restless_nomad said, if the framing had been different, it's entirely possible that the Ask would have stayed, and I would have had a good time sharing ideas with laconic skeuomorph and the other commenters. Maybe in the future, in a different context, we will.
posted by bakerina at 7:36 PM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

So now we have this kind of thing going on, this thread here and its results, which I find orders of magnitude more offensive and upsetting than any dumb comment about cutting the nuts off some bankers.

I wouldn't quite say that, but I think that the kind of forum where being an unrepentant profane asshole who harries people until they leave is encouraged and the kind of forum where being a whiny little prig who runs to mom and dad every time there's trouble is encouraged, well, both are pretty dystopian end states for an online community, and why participate?
posted by furiousthought at 7:46 PM on July 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yup. The middle path is a precarious one to walk. Metafilter's managed to do it pretty well for more than a decade, though, and that's why it is held in as high regard in many places as it is.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:02 PM on July 7, 2012

As I walked down Second Avenue towards St. Mark's Place, where all those people sell used books and other junk on the street, I saw my forum lying on a blanket next to a broken toaster oven. Some guy was selling it. I had to buy it off him.
posted by flabdablet at 8:12 PM on July 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

True, that. For what it's worth, my operating definition, in terms of Metafilter, is something along the lines of: bad behaviour by members is brought up and discussed in Metatalk. Users attempt help other users, particularly new ones, to understand and abide by the community standards that we as a community have coalesced around through previous Metatalk discussions.

This sounds like a great method. But it also sounds like what you're objecting to, here:

So now we have this kind of thing going on, this thread here and its results, which I find orders of magnitude more offensive and upsetting than any dumb comment about cutting the nuts off some bankers.

Is 'this kind of thing going on' the objection raised at the top of the thread, or the moderator reaction (deletion) to it?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:40 PM on July 7, 2012

"Scared Silent" sounds like a Chick Tract.
posted by adamdschneider at 8:49 PM on July 7, 2012

something something banality of evil. Listen I know most people in the industry aren't the ones personally doing the screwing, but if your are in the industry you are sure as hell facilitating the screwing.

hahaha, OKAY. I'll be sure to bring this up in my next performance review, maybe they'll give me a big bonus!
posted by triggerfinger at 8:56 PM on July 7, 2012

My theory for the lack of flags is that people who would once have been inclined to read them - like myself - don't bother now.

Absolutely my experience. As someone who has worked in financial services doing pretty innocuous things, it's disheartening that otherwise fascinating and rich FPPs are mixed in with one-line comments about how my coworkers and I are monsters. I get the anger, even if I think some of the vitriol is a bit too broad-brush, and I can take a jibe but it seems incessant.
posted by emergent at 8:59 PM on July 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

inevitable devolve into some kind of Left-wing Tea Party Lolztacular Mob bullshit, like every single time.

Well, yes, stupid behaviour is more likely from the angry.
posted by kengraham at 10:11 PM on July 7, 2012

Is 'this kind of thing going on' the objection raised at the top of the thread, or the moderator reaction (deletion) to it?

Both, and everything in between.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:41 PM on July 7, 2012

[but I'm over it at this point]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:00 PM on July 7, 2012

Jonmc, you are exactly correct. People interact with people on here, not collections of labels. Interact with me as me, and not as a standardized list of political bugaboos or market data.
posted by Snyder at 2:24 AM on July 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

Feel like I am stating the obvious here, but finance is a HUGE and very broad field and the people that everyone loves to hate are an incredibly small proportion of the entire industry. You might be surprised how little of my time is spent screwing over innocent and unsuspecting customers, counting my money and laughing and partying on my yacht

Word. My husband is a computer engineer who has worked in finance doing... computer things... and doesn't even HAVE a yacht.

Castrating him also would have deprived the world of one of the cutest babies in the history of babies, so y'know - glad that didn't happen. Also, I'd very much like to give said baby a sibling in the future so if we could just avoid castration entirely, that'd be tops.
posted by sonika at 5:11 AM on July 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

restless_nomad: Bakerina pretty much outlined what was going on there, with the additional caveat that if the framing had been both more neutral and more specific, it might well have stood. Putting in your strongest-possible-terms position statement in the question itself really didn't make it look much like you wanted to hear a range of answers on the subject.

I'm heartened to know we have so many mind-readers here as members and even one on the moderation staff. They must have been reading the wrong person though, because that's not really what I was thinking. After you deleted both my (iirc polite, on-topic) attempts to answer the "boyfriend controlling" AskMe with comments about the high-heels possibly being an issue, I was genuinely curious if my point of view was wrong or incorrect. Turns out it kinda is, as I found out from the short-lived AskMe I posted. That comment by bleep, the one I marked best answer, went a good way towards informing me about how to think about high-heels, sexism, and my parental teachings. I would have liked to have the question kept open longer than 20 minutes so I could gather more responses, but oh well. Thanks to bleep and the other commenters for their insight. AskMe & the community worked. The moderation failed.

Some added fun for the mind-readers: Try to figure out what I'm thinking right now. Here's a hint: I think restless_nomad is a poor moderator who deletes too much.
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 6:27 AM on July 8, 2012 [2 favorites]

I know! You must be thinking: I'm such a dick!
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 6:56 AM on July 8, 2012 [7 favorites]

Some added fun for the mind-readers: Try to figure out what I'm thinking right now.

I don't need to. Your question was chatfilter. The deletion was good.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 6:58 AM on July 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

It kind of seems like your mind isn't so hard to read, after all. It's almost like you wear your heart on your sleeve.

Getting deleted and then reposting that same text elsewhere is a good indication that you are posting out of frustration rather than good faith. No such indicator is perfect, but just as I think I have a good idea of your opinion of restless_nomad given what you've written, I think I have a good idea of why you posted that question: that you were frustrated by what you perceived to be an unjust deletion and sought validation.

Nothing you've done since belies this interpretation, but it's not too late to prove me wrong. All you have to do is chill the fuck out.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:14 AM on July 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

laconic skeuomorph, your comments in the original Ask Me were not on-topic. The OP's boyfriend made her change her clothes and her shoes, which she felt was an example of him being too controlling, and wondered if she was right to be upset. Telling her that your parents taught you that heels are sexist is not an answer to that question.

Posting an Ask Me question that says your parents taught you that heels are sexist immediately after the deletion of your comment saying that your parents taught you that heels are sexist looked exactly like a stunt post, and was flagged like mad, and every moderator here would have deleted it under the same circumstances.

If you weren't just peeved that your comment was deleted, then it was up to you to frame the question in such a way to make it clear that it wasn't a retaliatory post signifying My Opinion On High Heels WILL Be Heard.
posted by taz (staff) at 7:20 AM on July 8, 2012 [10 favorites]

Here's a hint: I think restless_nomad is a poor moderator who deletes too much.

She checked in with us as well, basically asking why the question appeared so problematic to people flag-wise because it seemed to have a real question at its core. We looked at the deleted comment you had from the thread immediately before it which put your slightly-odd AskMe into the stunt post category as far as we were concerned. There were a lot of ways that question would have been fine

- not being right on the heels of a deleted comment in a contentious problematic thread timeise
- not containing an angry rant
- having more of a question to be answered.

"Is this widely popular fashion option sexist" is a question where the only real answer you're going to get is "it depends" and without knowing more about you or more about why you're asking it just looked like an odd reactive response to having a comment deleted.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:27 AM on July 8, 2012 [2 favorites]

Here's a hint: I think restless_nomad is a poor moderator who deletes too much.

I think you maybe restrain yourself too little. Like taz said, you're pinning on restless_nomad what was a pretty across-the-board "what the hell is he doing?" reaction to what seemed like a sort of pushy and chatty and poorly-timed-at-best followup to some off-topic askme deletions, so if you want to upgrade to "the entire mod staff is out of control!" you can do that I guess but you need to get over the idea that the problem is with r_n going off the handle or something.

Dropping us a quick line at the contact form to say "hey, I actually have gotten to thinking about this topic I was mentioning and would like to post an askme, here's the text, is that gonna work or come off as problematic or what?" would have been a great way to rework the dynamic to something where (a) we knew you were try to work with us on something and (b) you could know our take up front.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:33 AM on July 8, 2012 [4 favorites]

Triple play.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:43 AM on July 8, 2012

Fair enough. I apologize for flying off the handle.
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 9:04 AM on July 8, 2012 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter: The difference is large enough to render the analogy obviously shitty.


Would anyone like some tea?
posted by spitbull at 10:58 AM on July 8, 2012

From the initial whine to the concluding tantrum, this is one of the dumbest Meta threads I can recall. It must be the heat. Mods, open the fire hydrants, please!
posted by octobersurprise at 11:05 AM on July 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

Dropping us a quick line at the contact form to say "hey, I actually have gotten to thinking about this topic I was mentioning and would like to post an askme, here's the text, is that gonna work or come off as problematic or what?" would have been a great way to rework the dynamic to something where (a) we knew you were try to work with us on something and (b) you could know our take up front.

That's kind of ridiculous, don't you think? Something either follows the guidelines or it doesn't. Don't we get lectures every third meta thread about how the moderators are NOT editors and not moderating for content, only for rules violations?

This is the whole problem with the site as far as I am concerned: if you have buy-in from the moderators, you can do pretty much whatever you want. And if the moderators disagree with or distrust motives, just give it up because you aren't getting anywhere.
posted by gjc at 11:33 AM on July 8, 2012 [4 favorites]

All that said, I think it's problematic to go down the "what if it were a different subject with a wildly different social/historical context" road on this stuff because, you know, it's completely not that. The argument by analogy side is rocky and we'd much rather folks deal with what actually was said than what might have in a different, worse universe have been said.

Respectfully, that is BS. "What if the roles were reversed" isn't an argument by analogy, it is correcting for bias. If some action or comment is unacceptable for one group, it is unacceptable for another. Hiding behind "social and historical context" is just a way to try to legitimize one's biases.
posted by gjc at 11:42 AM on July 8, 2012 [6 favorites]

That's kind of ridiculous, don't you think? Something either follows the guidelines or it doesn't.

I don't think it's ridiculous in this specific sort of situation, where the user can tell with zero effort that something is not working with their current angle and could readily check in real quick with the mods about it if they want to make sure they aren't just setting themselves up for further frustration. Having some self-awareness about how you're interacting with the site is an important part of making it work here, specifically because we mostly let folks act on their own recognizance and only do the moderation stuff reactively.

Not wanting to have stuff deleted is fine; I don't think basically anybody wants to have their stuff deleted. But this is a moderated site, and people who have spent any time here know that. Pretty much the only guaranteed way to never have something deleted is to check in with us first about something that seems like it might be a little dicey.

And most things that people post or say in comments aren't even in "a little dicey" territory, so most stuff would never even be a candidate for a conversation like that. But following up a couple of deleted comments with an askme reiterating the subject of that is definitely more in the exception case area, hence the suggestion. I'd rather someone feel like the have the tools (which include proactive communication with us) to navigate this stuff in a way that minimizes their frustration.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:46 AM on July 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

Sometimes I think one of the main issues is that when we're hurting it's really easy to lash out at other people, especially referencing other things which are bothering people at a similar site - like in this thread, where an ill-thought joke about castration was used to broad-brush insult feminists after several very high-energy and high-pain threads about feminism on this site (or the lovely derail about a couple deletions on the Green). Usually there's an awareness that this is unjust, something reflected in how the references are oblique and include few details - making it impossible to actually discuss what is causing someone pain because it is only hinted at, not stated.

More and more I'm thinking that "in good faith" also includes a need to be clear about what I'm talking about and honest about my motivations for responding in a given way.
posted by Deoridhe at 2:17 AM on July 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

stavrosthewonderchicken: " So now we have this kind of thing going on, this thread here and its results, which I find orders of magnitude more offensive and upsetting than any dumb comment about cutting the nuts off some bankers. So it goes."

I'm with you on the 'more transparency' thing, and encouraging people to own their words.

On the other hand, in the bad old days we had threads like this one. Threads like that used to make me lurk more because I'd read the first couple of hundred comments and just walk away shaking my head at the vitriol. Which, looking back is a shame, because 500+ comments in that thread had this great comment that put everything into decent perspective. I didn't notice it back then. Buried in the slime, as it were.

Less moderation seems to lead to people flinging shit at each other. More moderation definitely stifles conversation. As you say, moderation has to walk a fine line.

I think you'll probably agree with me that if that Meta thread were posted today, the mods would likely have been more active in it, trying to defuse things and telling people to stop calling each other antisemites. I suspect Brian B would have been banned or given time off to preserve the peace and put out an impending flamewar.

It's hard to find a happy medium.
posted by zarq at 8:05 AM on July 9, 2012

"If some action or comment is unacceptable for one group, it is unacceptable for another."

This is a monumentally stupid and tendentious assertion. It's obviously false. There are innumerable examples of things which are right/wrong depending upon "group". Because context fucking matters. It always matters.

Anyone who claims that context doesn't matter and who's reduced something to nothing more than "action X" or "word Y" in order to argue an equivalency with something else is almost certainly being disingenuous — it's usually the case that the thing they're protesting is something that matters to them and the thing they're comparing it to is something that they normally don't complain about. So it's not just an egregious equivocation, it's also often hypocritical and opportunistic.

Worst, nine times out of ten it's from some relatively very privileged person whining about their butthurt while implicitly (though unintentionally) making it very clear to everyone how little they actually care about the concerns of the much less privileged people they're using for their rhetoric.

Here we have an outraged response defending wealthy, male Wall Street bankers from an obvious joke about castration by comparing this to sexual violence against women. The absurdity of this would be funny if it weren't so obscene and so typical of a criminally monstrous lack of perspective coupled with a colossal egocentricism.

I'm so goddam sick and tired of hearing the wealthy/men/whites/evangelicals/others complain about how they're the true victims, how they're treated so badly, how much everyone is ignoring their concerns. They should grow the fuck up, get some perspective, and stop whining.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:14 AM on July 9, 2012 [9 favorites]

I'm so goddam sick and tired of hearing the wealthy/men/whites/evangelicals/others complain about how they're the true victims, how they're treated so badly, how much everyone is ignoring their concerns.

You should prepare yourself for the next 20 or 30 years.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:51 AM on July 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ivan Fyodorovich: "I'm so goddam sick and tired of hearing the wealthy/men/whites/evangelicals/others complain about how they're the true victims...."

Well..... ;)
posted by zarq at 11:31 AM on July 9, 2012

Brother, you need to take the edge off. You know what works for me? When someone hears me vent, and then corrects my grammar -- it lifts me right out of the moment and calms me instantly!

Worst, nine times out of ten it's from some relatively very privileged person whining about their butthurt while implicitly...

You're welcome :)

I just chose a random bit of text because your comment is really long (well, short for you) (and I didn't read it all, forgive me). But, if you like, I can totally run the whole comment through the proofreader in my brain and get back to you with the results. There's really no limit to how good your day could get!
posted by gman at 12:05 PM on July 9, 2012

P.S. Unless you meant "their butthurt" as a noun unto itself. In which case, I cannot hope to help you.
posted by gman at 12:06 PM on July 9, 2012

I hate this comic. It pretends that "minority" is 1) something without context and 2) automatically means less power. Here's a hint for you - "We are the 99%" is not the rallying cry of the powerful, and whining that billionaires are only 1% of the population doesn't mean we should give them social services.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:21 PM on July 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Breathed is not pretending that; he's playing with the absurdity of that, for laughs. It's satire. It's pretty much his whole deal with much of his work on Bloom County and Outland and Opus. This is not Mallard Filmore.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:37 PM on July 9, 2012 [3 favorites]

Deoridhe: "I hate this comic. It pretends that "minority" is 1) something without context and 2) automatically means less power.

No, it's a satirical comic, poking fun at white males who try to claim minority privilege.

Here's a hint for you - "We are the 99%" is not the rallying cry of the powerful, and whining that billionaires are only 1% of the population doesn't mean we should give them social services."

I'm familiar with the effects of the current recession, severe poverty and the chronic and destructive imbalance of wealth distribution in the US, thanks.
posted by zarq at 12:40 PM on July 9, 2012

cortex: " It's pretty much his whole deal with much of his work on Bloom County and Outland and Opus. "

Thank you!

Wasn't there an Outland strip that had the animal characters wearing "skins" from a New York City cabdriver and other humans, poking fun at people who wear fur? I can't seem to find it online.
posted by zarq at 12:42 PM on July 9, 2012

"When someone hears me vent, and then corrects my grammar"

There was nothing wrong with the grammar in that sentence. Worst as an ultimate, not as a comparison between two things; there's nothing wrong with relatively very (relatively is modifying very); and their is the gender-neutral singular pronoun. Not that I find your intent to provoke very provocative...just sort of lamely wrong. *shrug*

You're more skillful as a privilege-defending troll than as a grammar-troll, I guess. The former seems to be your primary role around these parts.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:58 PM on July 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

"When someone hears me vent, and then corrects my grammar..."

BTW, I realized later that my correction of your inferred in "she inferred it quite clearly by how she characterized..." was possibly or probably a mistake. When I read your comment again later, it occurred to me that you arguably were saying that her inference in reading X was implied by how she characterized X (that is, she implied her inference) which is a valid and interesting thing to say and a correct usage. Or maybe you meant she clearly implied X — it's a common error. If I misread you, I'm sorry your butt was hurt over it.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:06 PM on July 9, 2012

Wasn't "butthurt" deemed offensive or marginalizing or something? Maybe I'm thinking of turd burglar.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:14 PM on July 9, 2012

I thought the whole butthurt thing was an anal rape "joke." (Ha ha, victim!) I find it a little icky that people make those jokes, but I do appreciate the insight they provide!
posted by heyho at 1:19 PM on July 9, 2012 [3 favorites]

Butthurt was discusses as a subtopic here - as I recall, the consensus was that people who used it were generally totally unaware of the potential anal rape implications. (I can't divorce it from them, so I prefer to avoid it.)
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 1:23 PM on July 9, 2012

It was raised here.
posted by zarq at 1:24 PM on July 9, 2012

Never play quick draw with a mod. ;)
posted by zarq at 1:25 PM on July 9, 2012

You're more skillful as a privilege-defending troll than as a grammar-troll, I guess. The former seems to be your primary role around these parts.

That seems a slightly bizarre accusation.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 1:27 PM on July 9, 2012

No, not really.

Still...
posted by clavdivs at 1:29 PM on July 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ivan Fyodorovich: There was nothing wrong with the grammar in that sentence.

I was correcting for awkwardness, not absolute right/wrong. Which is what I thought you had done as well, since you were... well, wrong.
posted by gman at 1:30 PM on July 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

I never have understood it as a reference to anal rape, but that isn't determinative, of course. Intent only means so much. I wouldn't have thought that it refers to that because, if it did, then it would completely undermine its connotation — the point is to belittle the complaint and implying that it's the same as anal rape emphatically does the opposite.

But...to me, it does. I can totally see how someone else might actually think in some weird way that comparing it to anal rape makes it more unimportant and laughable. That's fucked-up, but kind of par for the course for a certain mentality.

This is probably the first time I've ever used the term, actually. As I assumed the connotation was something like "I have an ouchy and the whole world should stop and notice because it's the Worst Thing Ever!", it seemed like a very appropro expression.

But I'm happy to never use it again and I stand corrected by those who object to its use.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:32 PM on July 9, 2012

But I'm happy to never use it again and I stand corrected by those who object to its use.

Please do. I was timed-out for using said references years ago. Matt had to delete at that time. I used it in anger but that is not the point. Really no reason to use it casually.
You could expand on "priviledge" though.
posted by clavdivs at 1:35 PM on July 9, 2012

Expand here.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:42 PM on July 9, 2012

What is the acceptable phrase for when you want to belittle someone's upset about a group being stereotyped or insulted?
posted by furiousxgeorge at 1:48 PM on July 9, 2012

belittle someone's upset

Depends on the upset someone belittled.
posted by clavdivs at 1:58 PM on July 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

I KID YOU FURIOUS!
posted by clavdivs at 1:58 PM on July 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

"Breathed is not pretending that; he's playing with the absurdity of that, for laughs. It's satire."

Yes. However, there are a lot of people who don't get that it's satirizing the impulse for the privileged to declare themselves the victim, but rather they think it's satirizing the impulse to declare oneself a victim in general — and as a pointed criticism of identity politics. And, honestly, speaking as a fan of Breathed, I think that he intended some ambiguity because while he was primarily satirizing in the first sense, I think he was satirizing in the second a little bit. There's a lot of humorists who do this; most comedians are at least a little reactionary because they're mostly interested in finding rewarding targets for their humor as opposed to, say, furthering social justice.

Often there's lots of ambiguity. But even when there's only a little ambiguity (as there is in this strip) these things inevitably become part of the rhetorical toolkit of reactionaries. You should keep in mind that this particular strip exists within the context of the height of both PCism and the anti-PCism backlash. I very much lived through that time and those arguments and while I believe that PCism got a little bit out-of-hand, the backlash against it was at least an order of magnitude stronger and angrier and it really formed the foundation for this contemporary culture of privileged whining and large body of cultural rhetoric that takes it as self-evident that these privileged groups really are now the oppressed minorities. I don't doubt for an instant that many, many people understand that comic strip as validating their reactionary worldview.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:14 PM on July 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

What is the acceptable phrase for when you want to belittle someone's upset about a group being stereotyped or insulted?

I think you think it is quite clear when you are trolling and I assure you it is not so clear.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:18 PM on July 9, 2012

No, I'm honestly wondering what the replacement phrase is. People use the BH word all the time, it's helpful to have an alternative.

I personally only troll when I think people won't notice. We may just have different definitions though.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 2:21 PM on July 9, 2012

Miffed, perturbed, maligned, chagrined, et cetera, Peter Cetera.
posted by Burhanistan at 2:27 PM on July 9, 2012

I don't know if they quite get the same meaning across on their own, you would have to say "unjustifiably perturbed" for example.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 2:30 PM on July 9, 2012

I dunno, trying to find a non-offensive way of belittling someone seems to be missing the point.
posted by rtha at 2:33 PM on July 9, 2012 [5 favorites]

I think one would do well in choosing simple words arranged in a way that is both descriptive and disarming.
posted by Burhanistan at 2:33 PM on July 9, 2012

Yeah if you're asking "What is a good way to belittle people on MetaFilter for their feelings of persecution that I feel that they are imagining?" I am going to suggest not belittling people on MetaFilter. It's bad for the community, is often a bad faith way of having a discussion and is sort of antithetical to most of the values we try to espouse here.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:35 PM on July 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

Ivan Fyodorovich: "I very much lived through that time and those arguments and while I believe that PCism got a little bit out-of-hand, the backlash against it was at least an order of magnitude stronger and angrier and it really formed the foundation for this contemporary culture of privileged whining and large body of cultural rhetoric that takes it as self-evident that these privileged groups really are now the oppressed minorities. I don't doubt for an instant that many, many people understand that comic strip as validating their reactionary worldview."

Many of us "very much lived through that time." You're not alone in that.

Since we're discussing the greater context, the strip ran in newspapers in October 1986. It ran on my birthday, in fact. Political correctness had been mainstream in the US for a while by then. It would increase in strength for the rest of the decade and into the 90's. But the backlash to it didn't go mainstream until the very early 90's, when folks like Camille Paglia began publicly attacking the PC trend as othering, identity politics run amok, and Limbaugh's fearmongering rants to his conservative male listenerbase became popular in '91, '92 and '93.

In other words, the strip actually predates the mainstream anti-PC backlash. For that matter, so did much of Breathed's early work, of which this was a part. So no, the environment in which that strip developed was not "the height of PC-ism backlash." That happened later.
posted by zarq at 3:17 PM on July 9, 2012

I personally only troll when I think people won't notice.

Hardly seems worth the effort, doesn't it?
posted by octobersurprise at 3:51 PM on July 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Nah, the only amusing trolling is subtle. What fun is "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?" if people don't think it's for real?

I guess more people define trolling as "intentionally being an ass to provoke a negative reaction" or, around here, the analogue of that "being indistinguishable from someone being an ass just to provoke a negative reaction." That requires at least a mild amount of sadism I just don't have in me.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 3:59 PM on July 9, 2012

the only amusing trolling is subtle.

Amusing to you or amusing to me? 'Cause if you're trying to amuse me, then you're gonna have to step up your game, son.
posted by octobersurprise at 4:13 PM on July 9, 2012

furiousxgeorge: "I personally only troll when I think people won't notice. "

We always notice. ;)
posted by zarq at 4:40 PM on July 9, 2012

I never said I troll here. That's just you being annoyed by me. :P
posted by furiousxgeorge at 5:05 PM on July 9, 2012

I was joking!

*points to smiley face*
posted by zarq at 5:27 PM on July 9, 2012

"But the backlash to it didn't go mainstream until the very early 90's..."

I recall the backlash being pretty strong by the end of the 80s. But, you're right — that strip ran at least a couple of years before the backlash had a lot of steam. I didn't realize it was that early.

Anyway, I still think there was a slight reactionary impulse in Breathed's humor. I think George Carlin is a good example how the humorist's very strong impulse to skewer and mock makes these sorts of targets very attractive. "Targets" being pcism and identity politics.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:47 PM on July 9, 2012

FWIW, I first became aware of the term "Politically Correct" because of The Bobs' "Please Let Me Be Your Third World Country," which was released in 1987. My college had a day called "Sexual Harassment Day" in '88 or '89 where all classes were canceled so we could, instead, discuss issues related to what constituted sexual harassment. That was the first time I remember hearing the Young Republicans go off about "PC run amok."

Its funny, because I remember us using that very Bloom County cartoon to lampoon the college Republicans over this issue. That last frame was traced out, blown up and mimeographed all around campus for a few days. We essentially used it to compare them to little boys with reasoning issues.

Not disputing your interpretation, but that was ours.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:44 PM on July 9, 2012

The whole recent policed orthodoxy on the right where people are kicked out of the Party if they show the slightest sign of being "RINO" or insufficiently devoted to conservative ideological purity is ironically much more like what was enforced by political officers in the Soviet Union or the way that fields like art and science were restrained against articulating any politically disruptive ideas than anything they ever tried to pin the label of "political correctness" on the left for.
posted by XMLicious at 7:15 PM on July 9, 2012

Yeah, it's sadly ironic. But a signature characteristic of the contemporary American right is to take on and/or project all the worst qualities they attribute to their enemies. A culture of victimization is one, political correctness is another. But it's the whining that gets me because all they did for years was mock other people for what they called whining. Now it's one of their chief preoccupations.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:32 PM on July 9, 2012

No, it's a satirical comic, poking fun at white males who try to claim minority privilege.

Eh, Poe's Law. It read to me like Carlin's "oh so funny" routine against PC-ness and his "oh so funny" rape joke. I like Carlin, but I skip those jokes because I simply don't find them funny.

After the past several weeks of "omg white, cis men are teh most prejudiced against EVAH y r u sew meeeeen!", parodies that repeat what actual people say actually meaning it simply don't work as satire for me.
posted by Deoridhe at 7:43 PM on July 9, 2012

That sounds a bit belittling.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 12:23 AM on July 10, 2012

That sounds like someone who should learn the difference between MetaFilter and MetaTalk.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:40 AM on July 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah if you're asking "What is a good way to belittle people on MetaFilter for their feelings of persecution that I feel that they are imagining?" I am going to suggest not belittling people on MetaFilter.

Or, y'know, just call them privileged.
posted by Reggie Knoble at 1:57 PM on July 10, 2012 [3 favorites]

I'd like to take a moment, after a few days reflection, to suggest that Aelfwine Evenstar, who basically stated that anyone who ever worked for a bank has the morality of a Nazi or a sympathizer of same, should have all his hair from head to toe turn luminescent green and then have ivy grow out of his ears.

Because I'm not going to go to that level, but just calling him one of the most dung-brained trolls to ever lay a pattern of slime across this site is not going far enough.

(And yes, troll. Not even a fun troll, like one in Homestuck, but the kind from first edition AD&D.)
posted by mephron at 3:12 PM on July 11, 2012

That sounds like someone who should learn the difference between MetaFilter and MetaTalk.

Who, me? I thought we were talking in context of someone using the BH word here in this thread?
posted by furiousxgeorge at 3:41 PM on July 11, 2012

It read to me like Carlin's "oh so funny" routine against PC-ness and his "oh so funny" rape joke. I like Carlin, but I skip those jokes because I simply don't find them funny.

Humour is always subjective.

I'm not sure if it's what you're referencing, but Carlin's bit on the enfeebling of language (which I quoted here 4 years ago when he died) is not only one of the milestones of comedy in the last 2 or 3 decades, but one of the milestones of cultural commentary. His 'rape joke' -- imagine Donald Duck raping Porky Pig -- isn't a joke, it's a joke about jokes, and wasn't meant to be ha-ha funny as much as to put a button on the bit.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:56 PM on July 11, 2012