BellaStrega

Operative word: trying

I suspect you're right. A big black spot in the bottom center of their vision. I am so totally checking out my next monitor to make sure it doesn't have some weird light trying to burn the Intersect into my brain.

I had a guy call to complain that his cable box was running hot. He'd been in the US Army and worked on tube-driven electronics like decades before, so he knew electronics, and his cable box was too heavy and too hot.

He did not want to hear about advances in microchips, let me tell you.

My monitor's the worst. The light is actually brighter than the monitor, and only about an inch below the screen. This was a huge distraction until I covered it up.

That was about 10 seconds after I turned it on.

How about people who think they know everything about whatever it is they're calling about, so they start lecturing you incorrectly as to how it's supposed to work and why your tech support is wrong?

What I hate is... The support person asks me my problem, and I run down a list:

* it's plugged in and turned on
* I tried unplugging and replugging cables
* I tried resetting the modem

etc...the basic stuff they always ask. And when I finish describing the problem and describing what I've already tried before finally calling, they ask...

"So is it plugged in and turned on?"

I would never make this mistake, as my speakers are constantly beaming bright blue cherenkov radiation at me.

Seriously, what is up with computer peripherals having these actinic blue lights the past few years?

It's still in the online store.

But...your name says you're not a Rikti spy. Does this mean you're lying to us?

What a horrible thing for a spy to do.

At least he doesn't know I'm here.

Oh shi-

Dude, I once had a kitty named Velcro. This is epic.

Are you for real?

I'm not mad at Westley. I'm not deliberately misinterpreting what Westley says. I'm not a guy. I'm not a stereotype from TVTropes.

No, I'm pretty sure that responses to speech should remain within the legal speed limit.

But people who whinge because they said something disagreeable and other people got mad at them seem to fit that Pesci mold you keep swinging around.

Okay, you know that a lot of slurs have a history of violence associated with them? That if you're a member of a group, and you hear a word hurled at you, that it is not unusual for that word to be followed up with violence?

I'm sorry that I'm not understanding what you're saying, but I'll throw this in:

I do think people should choose how they should engage, and spend energy where it'll do the most good. It's not always productive to spend energy on someone who's determined to justify whatever messed up thing they're saying about other people*, but it's often productive to work on practical solutions.

* Not a reference to anyone in this thread.

Alliteration.

It doesn't work this way. Power is related to the reasons that people take offense, but it doesn't grant power. Oh, sure, someone who deliberately pushes your buttons might be able to manipulate you, but there's institutional power which exists regardless of whether you take offense or not.

It doesn't work this way. Insult comics don't work this way. Shecky's not going to direct his jokes at purple people to make them offended - he's going to direct his jokes at other people who implicitly accept both the racist system that reinforces the idea that purple people are inferior and maintain the systems that make it difficult for purple people as a population to achieve equal standing with everyone else.

Also, history doesn't work this way. There's no racial group that's demeaned and insulted like that just because they're behind the times. There's systems of colonialization, imperialism, and racism that sustain that disparity in development.

You're reducing the interplay of power down to the awful things people say about other people and other people's reactions to those awful things. You're ignoring the systems and institutions that exist to validate those awful things and the use of those awful things to maintain an unequal system.

You're also removing a significant portion of the majority's responsibility for maintaining those systems. Not getting offended at racist, sexist, or homophobic jokes won't change the fact that women make less than men for doing the same work, and won't change how black men are disproportionately arrested, convicted and sentenced, and it won't change how Focus on the Family and affiliated organizations are practicing a sustained and aggressive campaign opposing equal rights for LGBT people.

I'm not saying that women, people of color, or LGBT people (or any combination of the above) are helpless victims, btw. But rather that it's not always easy to overcome institutionalized prejudices.

When I call someone out because they said something offensive, it's not always (or even usually) because I am personally offended, but because the language itself - what these people are saying - implies a certain perspective, a certain viewpoint about certain groups of people, often dehumanizing, and often validating the systems that are in place that reinforce the notion that some people are inferior to others because of who they are instead of the content of their character. And I don't think most people really think about that when they say or do those things.

I often find that people try to reduce this to offense, or to personal offense. Then it becomes about how they hurt my feelings (or didn't really hurt my feelings because I'm oversensitive, or I didn't point it out nicely enough, or whatever), and is kind of trivializing.

You are taking what I said literally, and I was speaking metaphorically*. What I meant by a democracy where people get to outvote whether or not taking offense is valid or not, I meant your comment where you said "everyone else is the control and you are the variable."

Of course offense lies in people's minds, but this doesn't invalidate it. Offense often comes from history, of the way some people have treated other people, often based on arbitrary traits. But the fact that a majority might not take offense to something does not mean when a minority does that the minority is wrong to do so, or that it's their fault for choosing to take offense - moreso, especially, than the decision another person makes to say or do something that gives offense.

* Not making this clear was my fault.

This post, in response to a rep comment:



That seemed pretty clear at the time. Did you mean something else?

My point to Coyote was that when you say stuff, people react and there are consequences. It's a copout to ask people to just ignore you when you **** up, that's all I was saying. You came back with no one has the freedom to not be offended, which...is true...but wasn't really relevant. So I made some assumptions about your position based on that, sorry.

Your interpretation of freedom of speech is one-sided. You have the freedom to say what you want. You do not have freedom from the consequences of your speech. If you say something offensive, then someone who is offended is perfectly within his or her rights to say so. That's another exercise of freedom of speech.

Unfortunately, all too many people think that freedom of speech means freedom from criticism or consequences of that speech, and seem to complain about or have trouble processing that reactions to their speech is just another exercise of that freedom of speech.

Also, going back to something you said a few months ago, when you claimed that everything you say averages out to "not offensive" because you feel that more people are not offended than those who are - you're trying to give a subjective experience an objective existence, and this is bound for failure.

Some things are offensive to some people, some of the time. A lot of people on this forum find a lot of things inoffensive that are pretty blatantly offensive to some people. Is the fact that 100 people weren't offended by a casual comment really more important than the 5 people who took offense because that casual comment has a painful history for them - not just as individuals, but because of their gender, race, or other trait? Is it really more important to shift the blame onto people for taking offense when you shove your foot into your mouth, or is it better to apologize because you honestly didn't mean to cause offense and move on?

Why is your right to say anything you want more important than the people around you? Why is anyone taking offense supposed to be some kind of fake democratic process where the majority gets to nullify their reactions and history? How is taking offense itself not an exercise of freedom of speech?