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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @09:15AM
(3 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday June 30 2020, @09:15AM (#1014434)
I'm not sure I agree unless you go back some number of centuries, at which point the modern notions of liberal and conservative lose all meaning. I mean obviously the conservatives had their brand of ignorant and bigoted self righteous hypocrisy with the Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, and so on. I can still remember people trying to ban Dungeons and Dragons because it was 'Satanic'.
But what we're seeing today is similar to the bigotry (and hypocrisy) of times *far* past. Digital mobs in particular are becoming increasingly reminiscent of lynch mobs. While that has a racial connotation today, people of all sorts were lynched for falling short of what the masses perceived as their social norms of the time. The largest lynching in the US was the Great Hanging at Gainsville. [wikipedia.org] 41 men were lynched for being 'suspected unionists.' The digital mobs of today are actively and purposefully doing all they can to try to destroy people's lives: getting them fired and even actively driving people to suicide. And the digital world is increasingly starting to blend with the real world where that 'digital violence' is becoming physical violence.
This is rather unprecedented at such scales. I mean can't try to step outside of this all and look back at how people are going to see all of this? For that matter, step outside of it and imagine how people in much of the rest of the world *already* see it! This is a serious problem, but people are just kind of shrugging it off, or creating incredibly spurious rationalizations for it. Mobs are stupid and dangerous. Self righteous mobs are the same only many magnitudes worse. Events of this sort are relatively new in modern times, but it's not a new story: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I've always been a shy sort myself, and all this stuff is telling me boils down to "hole up, hunker down, keep your nose clean, and wait for it blow over. Oh, and get across the Canadian border ASAP."
-- I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:13PM
(1 child)
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:13PM (#1015024)
Wouldn't disagree, though I chose a bit further than Canada - whom I suspect this nonsense will also come to in relatively short order.
The one thing that confuses me about society at large is that I think if you ask people about the trajectory of the country most people can see the directionality/momentum of where things are headed. But they kind of just blank on what the destination is. It's kind of a fun thing about reading very old newspapers around the time of various historical events. They rarely if ever come from nothing. It's all just a gradual stairstepping towards the final show. So recurrent is this that on occasion get this sort of deja vu type feeling when reading of modern events. It just feels I'm just reading more of those old headlines leading up to a historic event you already know.
I'm poor, traumatized, and all alone in the world save for my SO. We have very very limited options. I plan if at all possible to end up in Halifax or thereabouts within 5 years or fewer and basically just disappear off the face of the earth waiting for all this shit to blow over. I know I won't live to see a positive resolution, and I know I'm about to witness geopolitical seismic shockwaves the likes of which have not been seen since world war II. I just don't want to be in the epicenter when the shaking starts.
-- I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @09:15AM (3 children)
I'm not sure I agree unless you go back some number of centuries, at which point the modern notions of liberal and conservative lose all meaning. I mean obviously the conservatives had their brand of ignorant and bigoted self righteous hypocrisy with the Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, and so on. I can still remember people trying to ban Dungeons and Dragons because it was 'Satanic'.
But what we're seeing today is similar to the bigotry (and hypocrisy) of times *far* past. Digital mobs in particular are becoming increasingly reminiscent of lynch mobs. While that has a racial connotation today, people of all sorts were lynched for falling short of what the masses perceived as their social norms of the time. The largest lynching in the US was the Great Hanging at Gainsville. [wikipedia.org] 41 men were lynched for being 'suspected unionists.' The digital mobs of today are actively and purposefully doing all they can to try to destroy people's lives: getting them fired and even actively driving people to suicide. And the digital world is increasingly starting to blend with the real world where that 'digital violence' is becoming physical violence.
This is rather unprecedented at such scales. I mean can't try to step outside of this all and look back at how people are going to see all of this? For that matter, step outside of it and imagine how people in much of the rest of the world *already* see it! This is a serious problem, but people are just kind of shrugging it off, or creating incredibly spurious rationalizations for it. Mobs are stupid and dangerous. Self righteous mobs are the same only many magnitudes worse. Events of this sort are relatively new in modern times, but it's not a new story: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:04AM (2 children)
I've always been a shy sort myself, and all this stuff is telling me boils down to "hole up, hunker down, keep your nose clean, and wait for it blow over. Oh, and get across the Canadian border ASAP."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:13PM (1 child)
Wouldn't disagree, though I chose a bit further than Canada - whom I suspect this nonsense will also come to in relatively short order.
The one thing that confuses me about society at large is that I think if you ask people about the trajectory of the country most people can see the directionality/momentum of where things are headed. But they kind of just blank on what the destination is. It's kind of a fun thing about reading very old newspapers around the time of various historical events. They rarely if ever come from nothing. It's all just a gradual stairstepping towards the final show. So recurrent is this that on occasion get this sort of deja vu type feeling when reading of modern events. It just feels I'm just reading more of those old headlines leading up to a historic event you already know.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:54PM
I'm poor, traumatized, and all alone in the world save for my SO. We have very very limited options. I plan if at all possible to end up in Halifax or thereabouts within 5 years or fewer and basically just disappear off the face of the earth waiting for all this shit to blow over. I know I won't live to see a positive resolution, and I know I'm about to witness geopolitical seismic shockwaves the likes of which have not been seen since world war II. I just don't want to be in the epicenter when the shaking starts.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...