Mr Ink 5000 said:
According to Wikipedia, there are 8 diifferent types of Morris Dancing styles.
Imagine a Morris Dancing journalist said; that because of this, the amount of styles, the term Morris dancer was dead. Morris Dancers Are Dead the title would read.
Then the Cotswold Morris Dancers flew in to a rage, they'd never been so insulted. The Cotswold Morris Dancers, created a campaign, some parts of which tried to sensor the author by pressuring their sponsor.
Then the North West Morris Dancers came to the rescue of the author by criticising everything the Cotswold Morris Dancers enjoyed, said or did.
Then each side spoilt the picnic further by escalating into #MorrisGate, death threats, doxing, pedantic criticism etc. While the other six styles of Morris Dancers (Border Morris, Longsword dancing, Rapper, Molly Dancing, Ploughstots and Plough Monday) just wants to dance.
Then the news media outside of Morris dancing start to catch on, and there's headlines like Morris Dancers Death Threat a Woman for Being a Woman, and the words like, "look at those Morris dancing d**k heads," are muttered by the general public, when it was only the Cotswold and the North West Morris Dancers making all the noise.
I feel like such a Molly Dancer.
Now imagine that this was all actually over saying that one specific type of Morris Dancer didn't have to be your audience, and the entire metaphor was largely inaccurate as a result. People took a criticism of the perception of Morris Dancers as being a single type of Morris Dancers and the notion that it didn't have to be, and got offended and outraged at this false notion, and started screaming like children that they weren't like that style of dancers that nobody said they were like.
Imagine other articles reflected an increasing desire for other Morris Dancers not to be labeled Morris Dancers, a sentiment that had previously gone largely unchallenged, but was suddenly contentious because everyone was already incorrectly angry about the "death of Morris Dancers." Imagine Morris Dancers took a statement that you don't have to let the perception of the angry white Morris Dancer dictate who you or your audience was as a statement that Morris Dancers were all angry white males and acted, in response, like angry white males. Imagine, for a moment, that all this happened because nobody bothered to think about the actual commentary before they decided to get offended and angry.
Imagine how ridiculous Morris Dancers look in that world.
Now imagine a world where people read articles and think critically about them. Nobody's noses get bent out of shape because the criticisms about an expanding market and people uncomfortable with an identity aren't turned into raging hate speeches by people who supposedly shouldn't be responding. Now there is no backlash, no "war" between #morrisgate and the people they misrepresented. There's a good chance there isn't even a #morrisgate, as critical thinking would likely have diffused the controversy over a minor Morris Dancer sleeping with Morris Dancer critics for good reviews when it turned out there was no actual meat on the bones.
We'd still be in a place where people were increasingly questioning their identities as Morris Dancers, but there wouldn't be bile or vitriol over commentary on it because nobody would be pretending it was actually the end of Morris Dancing. And maybe, if Morris Dancers conducted themselves like mature, intelligent adults, they could shake their image as angry white males who ostrasise female and minority Morris Dancers by addressing such controversy in a mature fashion.
And everybody could just dance, because nobody decided that a commentary over identity of the market...I mean, dance scene was hate speech against all Morris Dancers.
That was a long way to go for a metaphor, but there.
