National Guard called into Minneapolis

[Dwarvenhobble]

Let's assume for one moment that the people who orchestrated the original 4chan hoax were not far-right activists trying to discredit their political opponents and cover their own politics, but fun anarchic trolls indulging in a bit of carnivalesque fun. That's not true, they absolutely were far-right activists, but let's assume it anyway. Let's assume the whole thing is a big giant joke which happened for no reason. Oh boy, what are those wacky trolls going to do next!

So let's assume every single person who photographed themselves making the okay sign, including all the actual neo-Nazis, were just doing it as a funny joke. They were just putting on an act and pretending.

But what were they pretending to be?

What if...... and I admit this is a huge fucking stretch in logic.

They were just saying they were OK to the camera........

Oh right, they were pretending to be white supremacists. That was the joke, right? These people who totally aren't white supremacists (except the ones who actually are) are pretending to be white supremacists, so that those silly oversensitive liberals get mad at them and think they're white supremacists. That's how this works, right? That's the joke.

No the Joke is the reaction and gullible people believing it and going after people for it........4chans fun id the idiotic actions of others. Like the charge your iphone in the microwave thing they did or the fake waterproof phone update etc.

It sounds to me like these cool wacky fun trolls gave white supremacists the power to coopt that symbol when they set out to make people believe that symbol was a white supremacist handsign. Crying that people think you're racist because you did a hand sign that you deliberately attempted to make people believe was racist isn't really taking that power back. Refusing to distance your pretend white supremacy from the real white supremacists who are not pretending isn't taking that power back.

At this point though, the issue is less that white supremacists coopted an innocent joke, and more that you have to be pretty gullible to believe that this was ever a joke.

Guess you can't eat meat anymore or you're a White supremacist them because that's a thing 4chan and PETA said it was.

Hell I'm sure the proud boys mocked chaz asking for Soy meat alternatives as supplies.

The point is to get people attacking anyone doing it even innocently because they wanted to say OK.......

Forgive my lack of sympathy, it just seems to me that anyone who flips that easily maybe wasn't being entirely honest about pretending to be a racist.

You mean people who lose their livelihood over a false allegation because people pestered or in more extreme cases threatened their employer?
People who face people trying to get their family to disown them and friends to desert them?

If you leave a person with no friends, no livelihood and nothing else then you just created a potential recruit for the White supremacists by creating a disenfranchised person who perceives they were attacked for nonsense reason by the side in politics claiming to be "On the right side of history". And people will keep on after them.

So that's how it happens because people get opened up to being radicalised by being falsely targeted to begin with.

If those people were pretending to be Nazis, I don't really care.

Why would you pretend to be a Nazi?

Ask however many actors play them on TV or in films lol

I don't get why it's relevant.

You were claiming 4chan weren't responsible for pushing modern freebleeding yet it's literally on wikipedia saying they did start the modern push for it lol.

How is that not relevant or not absolute evidence of how easy it is to fool people into thinking something isn't a 4chan Joke people fell for.........

Why would you pretend to be a Nazi if you didn't want people to go after you?

Sounds dumb to me.

They don't. They want people to go after others. That's the point

No, it doesn't.

It just requires you not to care about irony which isn't actually irony.

Which can't work because the joke is often the retroactive application of the standards onto things as though they've always existed and the secret code signs have always been there but until 4chan revealed them only the groups in question knew this super secret code.......

People were making the OK sign in pictures because they were saying OK.

otherwise here's Joe Biden in his 2020 election campaign secretly sending signs to White Supremacists

I love how you will openly admit that going after a disability activist to get people to attack her online is "4chan's style", but then want me to care if these innocent lovable trollsters get (mis)identified as Nazis, or are outed to their bosses.

Because it won't be the trolls who get outed mostly it will be random people being targeted.

Do you really not care how many innocent people get falsely accused?

Also I didn't admit to going after the activist. Seriously are you actually trying to accuse me of that or was that just a fuckup on your own?

Like, the reason I didn't link to the /pol/ post on this is because people are literally talking about white supremacist shit in a thread about a stupid tik-tok meme.

Besides, let's be real. There's only one reason anyone from 4chan is on tik-tok.

View attachment 313



Yeah.

But I suspect we have very different ideas on who the people are who need to know this stuff.

I'm sure they were because I mean if shopping a pro Trump thing got the reaction it did they'll probably try shopping more stuff onto more peoples photos because 4chan is the incarnation of the Joker. They live to cause chaos for the most part.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Honestly dude, no, they really don't. Statues generally contain very little information, losing them is not a huge loss

They generally give a name which is a start

Genuinely have no idea what kind of point you're angling for here dude, I'm I'm not entirely convinced you do either. I picked the statue because its a representation of an oppressor thrown into the river by people being oppressed. The events around that Claudius are a dead ringer for ones happening now, and demonstrate that history and knowledge remain unchanged by the destruction of statues

Well lets just say Boudica isn't the person you want your group associated with at present because the others groups associating with her. Well you may not like them very much. In fact you really won't like them. I mean a read headed woman (Red hair i a recessive gene like blonde) helping drive invaders from other lands from the shores of the UK. I'm sure you can make an educated guess on this one as to what groups rather like mentioning her. Additional clue, it's not the Scottish.

Quite frequently dude, no, no we do not. Those things get exposed to the real world which means they more than likely end up trashed through simple virtue of time if nothing else

And plenty likely have been lost to time.

If you would care to actually read what I'm saying and not construct a strawman you will see that no, I'm saying they'd be aware of history. History gets passed down by people telling stories about it dude. Why do you think my example was Shakespeare, a storyteller?

And stories often aren't that reliable about the truth of the matter.

Your average dude in Shakespeare's time is getting about the same schooling and education as an average dude in Chaucer's time: very little.

And before that?

So if they're constantly getting moved and destroyed anyway, why so angry about ones getting moved or destroyed now? Clearly when its happened before its done absolutely nothing to actually erase history

Why do they need to be moved or destroyed now? Because people got their feelings hurt and want a petty useless symbolic victory?
Normally they wait until a place is captured because pulling down the statues lol

Wait long enough and every statue that exists now will have been pulled down. Why do you think I picked a statue from 2000 years ago to demonstrate historical parallels? It shows there is no stasis, that architecture and monuments are constantly shifting and changing and it does nothing to impede the knowledge of history. If you're going to argue against my points it would help if maybe you tried to understand them first



People have been doing exactly that. For years. So whats your point exactly?

And yet they have changed for less in a long while than they did in the past because we don't tend to have so many conflicts (at least in the West) Plus they can be better maintained and repaired.

 

[Palindromemordnilap]

They generally give a name which is a start

No, actually they don't. Even if a statue was given any kind of identification originally, and many are not, they're usually the first thing to go either through natural weathering or deliberate human intervention. We know who is on the statues via historical context, we are not informed of history by the statue

Well lets just say Boudica isn't the person you want your group associated with at present because the others groups associating with her. Well you may not like them very much. In fact you really won't like them. I mean a read headed woman (Red hair i a recessive gene like blonde) helping drive invaders from other lands from the shores of the UK. I'm sure you can make an educated guess on this one as to what groups rather like mentioning her. Additional clue, it's not the Scottish.

To which I will once again point out I didn't choose Boudicca. I chose the statue. The statue is what I'm using as my contemporary evidence, as my parallel, as my historical example. Trying to sway things to a discussion on Boudicca is you either ignoring that deliberately or just failing to understand the point I'm making. Which would you prefer?

And plenty likely have been lost to time.

Yep. Literally my point. Statues and monuments get lost to time anyway, and yet history doesn't get erased. Why do these ones suddenly matter?

And stories often aren't that reliable about the truth of the matter.

What do you think a statue is other than a story cast in stone? Hell, what do you think history is if not a story we tell as accurately as we can? Why do you think history is constantly being reassessed and revised?

And before that?

I mean how far back do you want me to go here dude? I give you Shakespeare from the 17th century and apparently thats not early enough for you so I elect Chaucer from the 14th century and you want me to go back further? Why? Schooling for all didn't become a thing until way later, education in anything other than the career you're going to take remains the purview of the wealthy until far after Shakespeare. What are you even trying to get at here other than just disagreeing on principle?

Why do they need to be moved or destroyed now? Because people got their feelings hurt and want a petty useless symbolic victory?
Normally they wait until a place is captured because pulling down the statues lol

Get a glimpse of your real motivations with your second sentence there, don't we? You don't care about history, you just don't like seeing the "other side" get a "victory". Leave history out of it if that all you care about

And yet they have changed for less in a long while than they did in the past because we don't tend to have so many conflicts (at least in the West) Plus they can be better maintained and repaired.

You'll notice how you've gone from insisting that statues are eternal monuments of history when I pointed out how few actually survived from antiquity, to now trying to say they changed before but are solid now. If you were mistaken before about how long statues actually lasted, what makes you think you're right about them being steadfast now?

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Eh. Seems like pretty weak arguments to me. He brings up percentage of confirmed homosexual characters vs the total population of characters without thinking about various factors like, 1. How many named characters display any clear romantic desires, let alone heterosexual or homosexual. 2. It is entirely possible for any number of background characters to be homosexuals. Now, you can argue that it's bad that all the homosexuals are background characters, but if your argument is based purely on realism, there's no discrepancy. This isn't like race where you can see physical differences between people, though, even in that case there are hispanic and black people that can look white.

He's also falling into the trap of assuming that a percentage of the population being homosexual means we must see that same percentage reflect in every sample we take. If you have a giant bowl filled with 1000 gumballs and there are 40 blue gum balls, would you expect to always grab at least 1 blue gumball every time you dunk your hand into the bowl? No. And I find this problem contentious because it's the same logic people use when it comes to RNG in things like Hearthstone. I've seen so many people talk about how the game is rigged because they switched their deck and "immediately" began seeing people with a deck that counters it. The reason they think this is mostly thanks to them having forgot all the positive times where they went on a winstreak since negatives stand out in our minds more, but also because they assume that having a certain winrate means that their wins and loses should be somewhat evenly spread out with 1 win followed by a loss followed by another win and maybe 2 losses then another win and so on, but this is not how statistics work.

To put this in another way, there's about 2.6 million farmers in the United States but if you were to then break down how many farmers are in each state then your results will vary wildly because of the geographic conditions of each state. Homosexuality is a genetic trait and so there's a certain percentage of people with this genetic trait and even in the modern era with global travel, humans generally don't move very far from where they started and even in the cases where they DO, you end up with a lot of places like Chinatown in various cities where people of a certain type group together for camaraderie. Humans are no soluble, we do not evenly distribute ourselves. The real world is also not the internet, minority groups that are not based on physical traits are going to have to seek each other out over space and time and with care in the case of one that can be socially ostracized. You will not be able to pluck a homosexual out of every random group like you can on the internet where thousands of people can view a single question of, "Is anyone here gay? and answer it immediately

Having an issue with homosexuals not being represented at all is a valid complaint. Having an issue with inaccurate portrayals of homosexuals in media is also a valid complaint. Complaining that there were no examples of homosexuals in a particular series made by 1 person is not valid, especially considering that this series started in the late 90's before the current wave of rights activism began and modern social pressures started on creators. Also, the same societal stigmas on homosexuals should also exist in the Harry Potter world so I would expect many homosexuals IN that universe to not be very open about it for fear of being ostracized.

Let me put this in yet another way. The main character of the Fantastic Beasts movies being autistic, and the best damn example of a high functioning autistic individual I've ever seen as well, was a rare treat for me. But I do not expect every single story to feature someone with autism, nor do I expect for the times that there IS one to have a perfect ratio of autistic vs neuro-normal individuals, and most don't even have ONE autistic individual in them. This video is not making a good argument.

On a side not, the name LGBTQ+ is starting to piss me off, especially after hearing someone say it several times in one sitting. If your "shorthand" name for your group has gotten to 6 syllables then you need to come up with a new name. This is not a judgement of the community, the naming convention has just become too bloated and the community itself should come up with a new name before the term "Alphabet Community" takes hold.

 

[Revnak]

No that bad isn't a terrible standard nor was helping found the USA an achievement not worthy of remembering as such.

Jefferson’s involvement in the revolution is ultimately trivial and dumb. He was picked by the New England revolutionaries because he was Virginian, educated enough, idealistic, not independently wealthy or powerful enough to position himself as a real force in the movement, and kinda popular with Southern planters. He wrote a document the Franklin and Hancock decided needed to exist so that there was no backing out of the war for southern planters. The important part was people deciding it needed to exist, not its being written, and I’m certain with Franklin editing it’d have been an excellent document regardless.
Jefferson’s real importance arises after the war. He coalesced the Virginia Democrats, he engineered the party to be poor whites guided by souther gentry, he took the propaganda mills the anti-federalists built and turned them utterly insane (famously arguing Adams was a hemaphrodite). His failures in diplomacy soured US and French relations, and his embargo on both sides of the Napoleonic wars made the war of 1812 inevitable. But of course, most damning of all, he did nothing for the people of Haiti and in fact assisted Napoleon and the Big Whites in trying to bring the Hatian people to heel. He was an imbecile, he was a monster, and he sucked ass. That more time is spent romanticizing one paragraph he wrote because Franklin was a savvy politician (because nobody ever analyzes any part of the Declaration other than the first paragraph) than is spent on the profoundly long list of his failings is a testament to how broken American history is by our reverence for these symbols and monuments.

Fuck Thomas Jefferson.

 

[Hawki]

Eh. Seems like pretty weak arguments to me. He brings up percentage of confirmed homosexual characters vs the total population of characters without thinking about various factors like, 1. How many named characters display any clear romantic desires, let alone heterosexual or homosexual. 2. It is entirely possible for any number of background characters to be homosexuals. Now, you can argue that it's bad that all the homosexuals are background characters, but if your argument is based purely on realism, there's no discrepancy.

I think the argument is sound in this case. He cites 31 confirmed relationships in the series (and that's an underestimate), with confirmed LGBT relationships inside the works coming in as 0. If we use the 4% figure, then, we should have at least 1 (something like 1.2 relationships). At the very least, the math used backs up the assertion.

Having an issue with homosexuals not being represented at all is a valid complaint. Having an issue with inaccurate portrayals of homosexuals in media is also a valid complaint. Complaining that there were no examples of homosexuals in a particular series made by 1 person is not valid, especially considering that this series started in the late 90's before the current wave of rights activism began and modern social pressures started on creators. Also, the same societal stigmas on homosexuals should also exist in the Harry Potter world so I would expect many homosexuals IN that universe to not be very open about it for fear of being ostracized.

Mixed on this.

Harry Potter is in a weird position where, when you look at it, there's actually an extremely large roster of characters, and it's testament to the series that so many of us (well, me at least), can remember their names so well. So when you look at the size of that roster, and do the math, there is a statistical case to go "hang on," at least if you're pursuing that line of inquiry.

On the other hand, I do agree that one can't always apply retroactive standards to works of fiction, so no, in of itself, the lack of LGBT individuals in the Harry Potter series isn't a problem in of itself, and I suspect that if Rowling didn't try to retroactively claim it was more progressive than it was, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

On the third hand though, do the same social stigmas apply? I think that's debatable. On one hand, classism of a sort exists - the Malfoys (wealthy) look down on the Weasleys (poor). On the other hand, purebloods looking down on mudbloods is a parallel to racism/anti-semitism, but isn't the same thing in-universe. Similarly, that muggles and wizards are forbidden from marrying in the US during the time of Fantastic Beasts is a clear reference to anti-miscegenation laws, but it isn't literally such a thing. The Wizarding World clearly has its own prejudices that simply don't exist for Muggles. So it's debatable whether homophobia would be among them. Similar to religion, there's not really any evidence either way on this front.

Let me put this in yet another way. The main character of the Fantastic Beasts movies being autistic, and the best damn example of a high functioning autistic individual I've ever seen as well, was a rare treat for me. But I do not expect every single story to feature someone with autism, nor do I expect for the times that there IS one to have a perfect ratio of autistic vs neuro-normal individuals, and most don't even have ONE autistic individual in them. This video is not making a good argument.

He outright states that he doesn't expect every work to represent him. It seems like you're kind of in agreement.

On a side not, the name LGBTQ+ is starting to piss me off, especially after hearing someone say it several times in one sitting. If your "shorthand" name for your group has gotten to 6 syllables then you need to come up with a new name. This is not a judgement of the community, the naming convention has just become too bloated and the community itself should come up with a new name before the term "Alphabet Community" takes hold.

Apparently the full acronym is now LGBTQQIP2SAA. I'll save you time and specify it stands for:

-Lesbian
-Gay
-Bisexual
-Transexual
-Queer
-Questioning
-Intersex
-Pansexual
-Two-spirit
-Asexual
-Ally

Make of that what you will.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Palindromemordnilap]

Arguably, statues and monuments serves not to inform us of history but to remind us of it. Some of them, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, are meant for reverence or mourning, but most statues tend to be decidedly about hero worship and patriotism. They remind us of history in the most banal way possible, by showing us great people existed in our country as a way to feel pride about our country today.



I don't think history is necessarily always told as accurately as possible, especially not by people obsessed with raising monuments to great people. History is told to us so that we can get a context of our own place within mankind's history. If you're a serious academic in a free country that can mean trying to retell the lives of people that came before us as accurately as possible. If you're Nikita Khrushchev it means erecting a ton of statues of Lenin, talking about the inevitability of the Russian Revolution and pretending as if Stalin and the Gulag archipelago never existed (and that you might have been a very obedient crony to the former in finding people to deport to the latter). If you're a KKK member in Virginia it means pretending Generals Lee and Jackson were bona fide heroes fighting for freedom and not slave owners fighting for their right to own and treat people as cattle.

See this is what I'm trying to get across to Dwarvenhobble. Statues are an incredibly limited and more often than not heavily biased look at a single individual. Their existence does more to erase and constrict history than their destruction will

 

[Terminal Blue]

What if...... and I admit this is a huge fucking stretch in logic.

They were just saying they were OK to the camera........

Look, here's the thing. You can believe there's absolutely nothing racist about the use of the okay symbol as a pro-Trump symbol during the run up to 2016 election. Sure, the original vine in which it appears has a weird racial angle to it, but that doesn't mean that the people who used it subsequently were racists or had even seen that vine. They might have just been reacting to seeing other pro-Trump people do it. Let's be generous and assume that it became it's own thing.

It's still not a coincidence, is it. It's a political symbol. These people weren't saying they're okay. They didn't suddenly all get into scuba diving and decide to practice their hand signals on land. They're expressing support for Donald Trump, and for Donald Trump's policies. Policies such as a border wall with Mexico, a ban on Muslims entering the US, and various other things which, to be honest, sound kind of racist.

Moreover, they're using a sign which comes from a video where the description reads "white people be like", and which was popularised by people who had, at the very least, dabbled with racism.

4chan didn't pick this symbol (in 2017) out of the blue. They picked it because it was an existing political symbol used by Trump supporters, and because there was already talk of it being a hate symbol. Was that talk justified, I don't know, maybe not. However, it's also not hard to see why it happened. It's really not as simple as 4chan owning the libs by taking an entirely meaningless and benign symbol and convincing them it was all about white supremacy, it's more about right-wing activists on 4chan taking a symbol already used both by the alt-right and more "mainstream" conservatives to indicate support for Donald Trump and, at best, mildly signal boosting the criticism it was already getting (which again, may have been unjustified but was fairly understandable) because, and I quote, it would be "good for us".

The more I look into this, the more obvious it becomes how little 4chan actually did. It's actually kind of shocking that anyone thinks their amateurish "hehe lets make twitter accounts with basic white girl names" prank actually did anything which wasn't happening already. All they seem to have done is take credit for a few journalists making what isn't even a clear cut mistake, just an unwarranted assumption.

No the Joke is the reaction and gullible people believing it and going after people for it.

You're saying the same thing.

The joke is pretending to be a white supremacist and having people believe you are a white supremacist when you are actually not.

If I'm a racist and I start saying racist things, people might react badly, but that doesn't make them gullible for believing it. For those people to be gullible, and for that to be a joke, they need to have been deceived in some way. If I'm actually racist, there is no deception.

That is the issue here. There is no clear deception, because the joke is not a joke.

If it was a joke, it would have stopped being funny once it became true. Once white supremacists actually started using the symbol, anyone who was telling a joke would have realised that the irony is gone. The people who are seeing this link are no longer gullible, they're actually seeing truthfully. But the intention isn't to make those people do a silly thing, it's purely to make them look like they did a silly thing. That's why it does not matter whether or not they are correct.

Guess you can't eat meat anymore or you're a White supremacist them because that's a thing 4chan and PETA said it was.

Again, literally nothing to do with 4chan. Entirely consistent with PETA's existing rhetoric, and eating meat is not a clearly intelligible political statement.

You'll notice that no scuba divers have been called out for using the "okay" sign while diving, because it's clearly not a political statement in that context. I refuse to believe that you genuinely cannot identify the context of when a hand signal is being used politically. Maybe not in every single case, but most of the time.

You mean people who lose their livelihood over a false allegation because people pestered or in more extreme cases threatened their employer?

People who face people trying to get their family to disown them and friends to desert them?

[Laughs in gay.]

You were claiming 4chan weren't responsible for pushing modern freebleeding yet it's literally on wikipedia saying they did start the modern push for it lol.

No, I said that I don't get what 4chan has to do with it.

Again, it seems very wholesome, so I guess maybe it's an interesting example of how bad actors can sometimes have positive effects unintentionally. Beyond that, I don't see the relevance. People aren't doing it because they've been "fooled", they're doing it because there are clear positive reasons to do it.

It's weird how your constant attempts to assert context and individual responsibility for one's actions suddenly run out just now, isn't it. Like, we have to pretend that actual white nationalists are just using the okay sign to show how okay they are, but at the same time you don't seem to be able to imagine why anyone would ever not use disposable sanitary products for any reason except that they've been literally tricked into doing it.

People were making the OK sign in pictures because they were saying OK.

Some of them were, yeah.

Noone has ever denied that.

Also I didn't admit to going after the activist. Seriously are you actually trying to accuse me of that or was that just a fuckup on your own?

I love how you will openly admit that going after a disability activist to get people to attack her online is "4chan's style"

Was I incorrect in my assessment of what you said?

I'm sure they were because I mean if shopping a pro Trump thing got the reaction it did they'll probably try shopping more stuff onto more peoples photos because 4chan is the incarnation of the Joker.

I love how you're just completely glossing over the ableism despite the fact it was the entire point of going public.

I guess Trump supporters are the real disabled people in our messed up society.

Honestly, 4chan is less an incarnation of the joker and more an incarnation of people who get really angry that Joker lost best picture to Parasite.

 

[Agema]

JK Rowling kind of brought that on herself by pretending that the books she wrote were more progressive than they actually were.

Kind of like saying that all religions and races were definitely represented at Hogwarts, despite never writing about them.

I think that's a little harsh.

That Rowling wrote books that are very focused on white British culture is no real surprise given her era and background, and when she started them, she probably wasn't thinking about race, religion, etc. much at all. Then she develops more social awareness with age and exposure to the world, and the older, experienced Rowling could understandably look back on her books and regret that they are less inclusionary than she'd like. She probably then feels a responsibility to make them more inclusive as a more fitting inspiration - but they're written and done. All she can do is add author comment from outside the books.

Thus it's about doing something when inexperienced, then looking back and wishing one had known what one did now to have done better. The funny thing is, she could just not give a damn, and she wouldn't have this problem: "You've got your stories, now fuck off and let me get on with something else." She's decided to care, and her reward is just more bile from the people who exist only to rage and pick holes.

 

[Agema]

I refuse to believe that you genuinely cannot identify the context of when a hand signal is being used politically.

Honestly, I think you're dealing with wilful obstruction here: arguments chucked against what others say for the sake of signalling disagreement, without attention to good evidence, sound reasoning, or advancing a coherent alternative narrative. It's mere gainsaying, but with a little more window-dressing than just saying "No it isn't".

 

[Hawki]

I think that's a little harsh.

That Rowling wrote books that are very focused on white British culture is no real surprise given her era and background, and when she started them, she probably wasn't thinking about race, religion, etc. much at all. Then she develops more social awareness with age and exposure to the world, and the older, experienced Rowling could understandably look back on her books and regret that they are less inclusionary than she'd like. She probably then feels a responsibility to make them more inclusive as a more fitting inspiration - but they're written and done. All she can do is add author comment from outside the books.

OR, she could have written more works in the setting, or written a new series. Which she did, technically, in both cases, but it didn't stop her from applying retroactive wokeness to the books she'd already written.

Rowling isn't the author creative out there who's retroactively tried to claim things about their works in the belief that it'll elevate them. But I think the debacle that's been unfolding ever since she claimed that Dumbledore was gay and still not showing it, despite opportunities to do so, is a cautionary tale. It's far better to be honest and say "I don't know" or "I didn't consider that" rather than going down the path Rowling did, because sooner or later, the hole you're digging will collapse.

 

[Agema]

OR, she could have written more works in the setting, or written a new series. Which she did, technically, in both cases, but it didn't stop her from applying retroactive wokeness to the books she'd already written.

Sure. Why not chain JK to her desk until she writes the story you want? If she tries to get away, you can always break her ankles. Whilst you're at it, you should also force her to give up her creator's ownership rights to the HP universe, and you can decide all future controversies over whether people were gay or not by public vote.

 

[Hawki]

Sure. Why not chain JK to her desk until she writes the story you want? If she tries to get away, you can always break her ankles. Whilst you're at it, you should also force her to give up her creator's ownership rights to the HP universe, and you can decide all future controversies over whether people were gay or not by public vote.

...the hell?

I'm not the one asking J.K. to do anything. I think the whole idea of demanding an author do something to cater to someone's desires is absurd. And while what you've written is hyperbole, the line "forcing her to give up her ownership" isn't as hyperbolic as you think, I've actually seen comments along those lines, or at least comments that espouse the goals of wresting the IP from her, or claiming that it's no longer her property, but the fandom's. It's death of the author taken to the point of demanding that the author give up ownership of their own work.

So to make myself clear, on one hand, I don't think an author is obliged to serve fans' desires. On the other, I think Rowling made a mistake in the way she went about trying to act on those questions.

 

[Agema]

...the hell?

I'm not the one asking J.K. to do anything.

That's strange, because it's exactly what you were suggesting in your previous post.

I think we can all say that Rowling's attempts to deal with this shit have not turned out great. I would merely suggest a little more sympathy (not necessarily you specifically) for a person that innocently wrote a few books, which turned out to be a massive worldwide phenomenon no-one would have predicted, which led to her receiving a huge pressure for explanations and to answer accusations (some which she probably finds hurtful). She's attempted to navigate them in a well-meaning and considerate fashion which she has hoped would be positive, often likely in situations with very limited ability to prepare and plan (we can also listen to the experiences of writers and actors at things like Doctor Who conferences - fans can be pushy and mean). And what she's got is a load of people simply criticising her anyway, ultimately because she didn't make Ron Weasley gay and Hermione BAME back in the mid-90s. She's basically either doomed by history, or has to make her creativity slave to various "popular" demands for specific content.

This rather leads me to suspect that it turns out what people really do want is a soulless megacorp that has whole battalions of people to carefully plan out the PR, create by mediocrity committee, and maintain high responsiveness to generate additional content on demand to address criticism as it arrives.

(Just for the record, I have never read any Harry Potter books).

 

[Buyetyen]

Honestly, I think you're dealing with wilful obstruction here: arguments chucked against what others say for the sake of signalling disagreement, without attention to good evidence, sound reasoning, or advancing a coherent alternative narrative. It's mere gainsaying, but with a little more window-dressing than just saying "No it isn't".

And since it is performative, might we refer to it as "vice signalling?"

 

[Hawki]

That's strange, because it's exactly what you were suggesting in your previous post.

In the sense that I haven't contacted Rowling directly. Others have.

Then again, semantics.

I think we can all say that Rowling's attempts to deal with this shit have not turned out great. I would merely suggest a little more sympathy (not necessarily you specifically) for a person that innocently wrote a few books, which turned out to be a massive worldwide phenomenon no-one would have predicted, which led to her receiving a huge pressure for explanations and to answer accusations (some which she probably finds hurtful). She's attempted to navigate them in a well-meaning and considerate fashion which she has hoped would be positive, often likely in situations with very limited ability to prepare and plan (we can also listen to the experiences of writers and actors at things like Doctor Who conferences - fans can be pushy and mean). And what she's got is a load of people simply criticising her anyway, ultimately because she didn't make Ron Weasley gay and Hermione BAME back in the mid-90s. She's basically either doomed by history, or has to make her creativity slave to various "popular" demands for specific content.

To clarify (again), I do have sympathy for Rowling. I think she could have handled things better, true, but on the other hand, some of the questions asked of her seem to be...iffy. I often feel that people who look at the books aren't keeping in mind when the books were written (1997-2007), or when the books are set (1990-1998), and that's not including Rowling's personal experiences. Rowling's a Gen Xer, who wrote books for millennials, which were then picked up by Gen Z. A lot's changed since then.

Also, obligatory Simpsons reference again, because I need to be reminded of happier times:

 

[Thaluikhain]

By book 7, the Death Eaters are obvious Nazi stand-ins. When they take over the Ministry, the literature Umbridge displays is a clear reference to stuff like Mein Kemf. But their level of 'purity' is purely on "pure bloodedness." A real-world Nazi would love an "Aryan," and hate a Jew or Roma. A Death Eater would love a Jew or Roma if they were a pure blood, and hate an "Aryan" if they were a mudblood.

Sure...only she's writing a fictional work, taking inspiration from people who wanted certain groups not to exist, and those certain groups don't exist in her work. Which is a bit of an oopsie.

Also, back to the Jews (how did this become about Jews? Bleh.). I don't know what the population of Jews was in the UK at the time, but right now, that's about 2%. If one's going for the representation angle, that's a really low percentage to represent. But it does tie in on another issue, and that's religion in the series, period. In the context of the books, I can't think of a single character who's said to be religious at all...but I also can't think of a single character who's specified to be irreligious either. So one group of people could say that (religious group here) is under-represented. Another could say that atheists are under-represented. And if we're talking about Roma, according to Wikipedia, they account for 0.36% of the UK's population. I'm not exactly calling the books anti-Roma at this point. And if we're going back to religion, and people complain about lack of Jews, or Muslims...okay, but like, how many religious groups are seen in the books at all? Unless you're assuming that everyone who isn't specified as (insert religion here) is Christian or atheist, but I think that's a big assumption to make.

True, but then she didn't bring religion up. Well, excepting that the Christian witch hunts never hurt anyone, and one witch would let herself be fake murdered cause she was into that, which also is a bit of an oopsie.

Not saying either of those are automatic fails or anything, but something better not to do.

Can you name some other authors? I'm actually curious

Well, the X-men were originally about the civil rights movement (and some LGBT rights stuff thrown in), but the films are about almost all white and all straight people (as an aside, while there's absolutely no LGBT people in the films, there's quite a few that worked on it). Hell, I'd not be exaggerating too much to sum some of them up as Aryan Ubermenches fight an evil Jew trying to destroy the world. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if they didn't keep blathering about how wonderful diversity is while doing it. In Dark Phoenix, Xavier gives a speech to a room full of (mostly white) people saying that no kid will grow up discriminated against for being different now that mutants are accepted, in the year 1992. Again, something better not to do, but I still watch the films. Dark Phoenix was rubbish for other reasons, though.

The Southern Vampires Series (which True Blood was based on) is about how vampires are treated like LGBT people. It contains about no sympathetic LGBT people, and vampires are inhuman monsters that the world would be better off without anyway. Oops.

I think we can all say that Rowling's attempts to deal with this shit have not turned out great. I would merely suggest a little more sympathy (not necessarily you specifically) for a person that innocently wrote a few books, which turned out to be a massive worldwide phenomenon no-one would have predicted, which led to her receiving a huge pressure for explanations and to answer accusations (some which she probably finds hurtful). She's attempted to navigate them in a well-meaning and considerate fashion which she has hoped would be positive, often likely in situations with very limited ability to prepare and plan (we can also listen to the experiences of writers and actors at things like Doctor Who conferences - fans can be pushy and mean). And what she's got is a load of people simply criticising her anyway, ultimately because she didn't make Ron Weasley gay and Hermione BAME back in the mid-90s. She's basically either doomed by history, or has to make her creativity slave to various "popular" demands for specific content.

When asked about the lack of LGBT characters, she did state that Dumbledore was gay, he just never was mentioned so in the books or films, but that it was a big part of his relationship with Grindelwald. Then she decided to make a film series about Grindelwald and his relationship with Dumbledore and she's decided not to ever mention it onscreen again. Yeah, that's rather dubious.

Not to mention her recent anti-trans ramblings.

 

[tstorm823]

Firstly, they're not appealing to a "secret fringe minority", they're appealing to a set of key voters that are identified as important to win over. Secondly, it's designed to not go down that badly with plausible deniability.



It "blows up" in the sense people notice and noisily point it out - it doesn't necessarily hurt someone's electoral chances if they do. Plausible deniability is powerful because anyone who wants to give the benefit of the doubt will do so, and that then still leaves lots of other people who don't notice even if there's a front page NYT spread.

Take the Trump-Ukraine issue. We should surely now be past the point where we can seriously deny that Trump tried to abuse the government for personal electoral gain. But even as the evidence mounted up, how many people fought tooth and nail to deny it? How many still do deny it? How little has it cost him: 1-2% in approval rating, and probably less in terms of national vote? And that's a solid example of substantial misconduct, never mind a mere coded reference.

You were wrong on Trump Ukraine. Get your fingers out of your ears. The prosecutor general of Ukraine was trying win Trump's favor by feeding him information. Trump instead went over his head and asked the President of Ukraine (both respectively) to deal with it. That's a perfectly responsible reaction.

And Nazi historians is not a key voting block.

 

[Buyetyen]

Well, the X-men were originally about the civil rights movement (and some LGBT rights stuff thrown in), but the films are about almost all white and all straight people (as an aside, while there's absolutely no LGBT people in the films, there's quite a few that worked on it). Hell, I'd not be exaggerating too much to sum some of them up as Aryan Ubermenches fight an evil Jew trying to destroy the world. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if they didn't keep blathering about how wonderful diversity is while doing it. In Dark Phoenix, Xavier gives a speech to a room full of (mostly white) people saying that no kid will grow up discriminated against for being different now that mutants are accepted, in the year 1992. Again, something better not to do, but I still watch the films. Dark Phoenix was rubbish for other reasons, though.

The Southern Vampires Series (which True Blood was based on) is about how vampires are treated like LGBT people. It contains about no sympathetic LGBT people, and vampires are inhuman monsters that the world would be better off without anyway. Oops.

It turns out that trying to make stories that are inclusive and allegories for treating people better are commendable as an idea, but not that easy to pull off. I would add to the list Zootopia for confusing its metaphor and copaganda, The Joker for not really committing to the "mental health" thing, and pretty much every attempt Joss Whedon has made at cinematic feminism.