The Official Rep Westley Thread

It is obviously the reason YOU post. This thread is all about YOU. This is not about "re-creating a feature" for anyone else but YOURSELF. YOU want people to comment here on YOUR posts. The only function such comments perform is to let YOU know that people are paying attention to YOUR posts. This is all about ego stroking.

Sorry PK/Westly, you have your moments, but IMO this is not one of your most shining.

Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson

So then... why are you posting here? If you believe that this whole thread's purpose is an "ego boost" for me, then by posting here, you are doing two things:

1. Giving me more attention and
2. Bumping the thread, thus giving me even more attention from other people.

So, if you believe that this is all about an "ego boost", and you disapprove of such a thing... why would you assist or facilitate in it?

Or are you really posting... as I suggested before, because YOU want to be seen, and YOU want attention. Because I believe that everyone posts, in essence, because they want attention.*

If you didn't want attention, OR if you didn't want to "assist my ego boost", then you wouldn't post here at all.

So I ask you again, why are you posting here?




*Korith, I don't buy altruistic purposes. Because in the end, even in helping other people, you are helping you feel good about yourself.

Because so often silence is seen as acquiescence or agreement. When I see something that I disagree with, I speak up.

Your attempt to spin this back on me is only more evidence of your own craving for attention. I will grant you that it's a nice catch-22, to speak or be silent, but it would be the worse of two evils for me to compromise my own thoughts and opinions to passive acquiescence.

However, so as not to perpetuate this ridiculousness, I will no longer respond to your baiting.

Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson

So... you posted, because.... you were worried that someone else would think that you both SAW and AGREED to this thread, because you didn't post in it?

But no one would have known that you've SEEN this thread unless you posted in it... so they wouldn't assume that you agree with it...

Logic... circuits... overloading!

I had my last wisdom tooth pulled last month. They had me on antibiotics for three weeks because they kept moving my appointment back.

When they finally did it, the dentist was all "You don't need much vicodin, because this won't hurt." Except that it did. It hurt a lot.

According to the mouseover text, it's been disabled.

Allegedly by you, but that's just default text, after all.

It was disabled by me because it was fluctuating too much. Within the span of a few hours it went from several green jellybeans to two red jellybeans, then back to four jellybeans. When I had made that statement, it had just inexplicably gone UP again. I don't like instability.

I gave you the rep that brought it down to two red jellybeans, since you seemed to be cheering on getting red repped.

I didn't mean it, though.

Maybe if you weren't such an attention wh... can you say that word on this board? Damned censor! Anyways, if you were actually just trying to say what's on your mind and not actually giving any care to those stupid red and green squares, then maybe (ironically enough), they wouldn't be fluctuating so wildly.

I got one red pip and I'm actually kinda amused by it. People don't like what I say, they don't have to listen! But when in the course of human history has anyone ever actually taken that advice? That little red square is just yet another reminder of how many people there are who just can't help being The Pesci.

It's amazing how thoroughly people try to disavow responsibility for what they say in public, insisting that if it's so unsavory they should be ignored.

Yeah, whatever.

Have you actually READ any of my posts? I ALWAYS say EXACTLY what's on my mind... whether people like it or not.

Actually Kali, I'm with Coyote here. In America we HAVE freedom of speech, what we DON'T HAVE is freedom from being offended. That's nowhere in the Constitution.

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?

Nope.

I never said otherwise, I fully agree. I said they don't have freedom from BEING offended. I never said that they had no right to EXPRESS their offense. I choose my words carefully, please read them more closely.

Once again I agree.

I've never said this. Link please?

If I offended and I didn't intend to, I do apologize. I've done so on several occasions. There is actually proof of this IN THIS VERY THREAD. When I offend and I INTEND to, I will not apologize, because I don't feel the need to.

We are all equal in our right to say whatever we want. I never said otherwise.

Once again, I never said this. Where are you getting this from?

I never said that people didn't have a right to BE offended, I said that they don't have a right NOT TO BE offended. Once again, read my words carefully, please. I choose them carefully.

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.

is that offense lies in the mind of the OFFENDED. And that is proof. If you are sitting next to your buddy and watching something and YOU are offended by what you are watching and your buddy isn't... that means that the origin of the "offense" lies within your own mind. If you are like me and offended by virtually nothing... then offense simply doesn't exist. Do you see what I'm saying here?

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.

I just KNEW when I picked that color that someone was going to make that joke. I wonder why I kept it... hmmm...

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.

Alliteration.