Sexual Harassment Panda said:
If you don't agree with these people, they caricature the shit out of you anyway (it's easier to be completely obnoxious and fight values you assume are held, rather than values expressed)... this kinda thing I fear isn't going to help any.
I totally look forward to the constant referencing of this comic to devalue any and every opinion that doesn't contribute to the snarky echo-chamber that is the escapist.
I just have to wonder how much of it is the issues being misunderstood, rather than the issues being implied. The mindset seems to me to take offense at the comic as a whole. A collective attribution to a joke targeting a specific. In the same way some are misreading the comic in casting too wide a net, so too are its defenders reading too wide a rhetoric. It seems more likely that the "If you don't like it, don't read it" crowd is reading collective offense where some are expressing targeted displeasure. Proof, I think, that the flaws themselves lie as much in human nature as they do in rhetoric or expression. Language is still imperfect, despite its practice, so they'll always be misunderstandings. Either from a comic that perhaps is a little too liberal with its humor, or perhaps in those who feel its defense deserves the same vehemence perceived, even though there was less projected.
As for the echo-chamber, I think that's just a flaw of communities. The longer one exists, the more a collective consciousness seems to form. Same reason half of reddit is just subreddits calling other subreddits circlejerky, then in the same breath, creating their own shorthand of memes and references, which earns them the very moniker they were made to mock. So too, it seems, forums have that same poison. Just the nature of people, the desire to fit in makes them very well-suited for fitting in, often at the expense of variety.
Doesn't mean everyone is that way, though.
