The internet has in some ways damaged my sense of humor: I’m so much more prone to taking people’s extreme comments at face value than I used to be, because at some point, the Internet has introduced me to a more extreme view genuinely espoused.
It is, therefore, unclear, what exactly, your point is.
Do you agree, or disagree? Is it a reasonable assessment to both agree and disagree?
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
> In 1969, the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action"
Of course in these cases the Internet Hate Machine's response is the same, but the intensity and effectiveness varies.
Is any single commenter legally responsible? Probably not. And not because they lacked intent, but because 99.9% of these threads are empty trolling. So they could be almost sure knowing nothing would happen.
However, if someone does this for years in the hopes to participate in a thread that is not a dud, well that's of course a different state of mind, but it'd be hard to prove.
The most astonishing part of your post is that you consider what you're writing "not an opinion".
Because it is nothing but opinion: it's the theory that thousands of non-antisemites would somehow find pleasure in some sort of "sport" of "pretending" to be vile anti-semites (and racists etc). To repeat this lame excuse is to amplify it, and one wouldn't do so without considering it convincing.
I don't see it is as convincing. I'm just as much not an anti-semite as these people pretend to be, and I see absolutely no mechanism how I would enjoy pretending otherwise.
And even if, somehow, there's a psychological explanation of how spewing insincere hatred provides these people pleasure: would that somehow make this behaviour worthy of public support? Even in the best case of not having any effect on the real world, aren't these people are just stewing in their ("pretend") hatred, wasting whatever time and potential they might have on malevolent low-brow attempts of lame humour?
But of course there are effects on the real world. We've just seen two such tragedies and there have been countless smaller ones. If posters there really are fundamentally of sound mind and not intending to be part of actual harm, can they just continue as before? Doesn't the proof that some people actually do commit violent crimes for fame and lulz somehow destroy this excuse of it all just being an act?
They really took pride in the hatechan nickname. The place left me with a really bad taste. There was some genuinely nasty people there. Not to mention the fucking pedophiles. So many fucking pedophiles. That place really made me believe there's no hope for people like that.
To be fair, if the incidence of escalation to use of lethal force weren't so prevalent as to be an almost guarantee in the states, the results of SWAT'ing wouldn't even be a problem but more of a nuissance, in the first place, yeah?
In other words, if the resultant actions of the police forces - whether believing they were acting in the interests of public safety or not - weren't so haphazardly deleterious to the public at-large (see the baby with burns because of tear gas thrown in it's crib, as an example), this wouldn't have been a viably dangerous exploitation surface to begin with.
Whilst I can understand that such an action (SWAT'ing) is bad and I am not trying to argue against, dissuade, nor assuage the realities of it, I'm merely trying to point out that the realities of the dangers of it's byproduct solely exist due to societial declination; particularly, in the devaluation of human life, as a whole - which has given carte blance, as it were, to the use of lethal force.
In other words, if lethal force weren't such a foreseeable outcome of SWAT'ing, would it even be something considered deleterious or would it be moreso considered merely a waste of time and resources (which, in and of itself, could have secondary or tertiary effects that are possibly damaging [e.g.: we couldn't respond to 'x' critical situation because we were dealing with 'y' critical situation])?
Even having the police just knock on your door might be deleterious enough: The point is the outcome is known, expected, likely, and almost certainly has an observable (by third parties that the person ordinarily associates with) negative effect.
Saying something nasty to someone in an online forum, that if ignored will have no effect, is still markedly different; and is readily differentiable.
A first test might be "if I didn't see the speech would it still have an effect".
Some of us distinctly remember the SiliconInvestor boards from long ago: Some wag started a topic on "I need to sell a kidney". Naturally, few took him seriously.
Turns out he was completely serious, and shortly after was in the news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_O._Barton
(also holy shit is the UX on this forum awful)
> and then a bunch of discussion a few months later
I remember the board got taken down, but was restored. The shooting was July 29, 1999, and the SIers were already discussing it on the restored thread Aug 11. The thread message at the top changed a few times, but it was pretty clear by Aug 16. https://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=10974409
> (also holy shit is the UX on this forum awful)
Hard to believe it was a giant step forward at the time (do we think people will look back at our current websites in 2039 and think they're beautiful?). SI was quite the daytraders place in its day, and this NYT article from Nov that year captures the spirit pretty well: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/magazine... (Mark Barton is also mentioned in that article, which was published pretty close to the absolute peak of the internet bubble. What a time.)
Unless you're a professional, jokes mostly just reveal the things going on in your brain
If you have a soft spot for jokes about dumb women or dumb [race] or encouraging kids to harm themselves, well...
moot has frequently exercised his unique power to ban a topic to prevent a single topic from overrunning a board. And, like the other chans before it, those most invested in that topic have a huge persecution complex and believe they are being censored when they are simple being told to take their soapbox elsewhere.
How many places do you have to get kicked out of before your 'belief' that you're being censored becomes true?
How many places does it take for you to get kicked out of before you start thinking to yourself 'maybe I'm the asshole?'.
Feel free to claim that they are assholes, or that people shouldn't have to accommodate them. But that doesn't falsify the claim that they're being censored.
Instead there is a bunch of people who believe their shitty behavior is completely justified and righteous and then can't comprehend why people don't want to tolerate them. I have no sympathy for that, whatever language you want to use. Call it censorship if you want, but there is no rule nor law that says shitty behavior has to be tolerated and supported.
When faced with the facts, the question is evaded, attempts are made to change the topic, and every slippery, misleading tactic is used to avoid admission.
I can only conclude such people are wholly uninterested in the truth, and are in fact actively opposed to it.
That might account for why it seems many people on this thread are talking past each other. I don't even think, as you imply, that the person you are replying to is purposely using misleading tactics to avoid admission.
I feel like there's this avoidance of using the word censorship because people think it implies something they don't want to imply about their principles. I could be wrong, but this is just something I've seen play out again and again in discussions about this topic.
For instance, my belief that it is fine and in-fact desirable that private forums censor particular topics, behaviors, etc doesn't necessarily mean that on-principle I am across-the-board "pro-censorship" (whatever that means).
So yes, a group is being censored from a private forum and decided to create their own private forum. I still don't see a problem with that, or "admitting" that is what is happening.
I honestly don't think it's on purpose, nor do I think it's limited to the word/act of censorship. It's a simple, subconscious mechanism of
group I dislike is victim of X (justly or unjustly) --> victimhood grants social power --> downplay/diminish/justify their victimization so they do not gain power
You're talking in vagaries, and including me in them, and I don't particularly care for that.
Bottom line for me is that if you want to call assholes being excluded from some spaces as 'censorship', you're free to do that, but most people are just going to call that 'assholes getting what they deserve'.
If you want to argue that we should be more accommodating towards assholes, then I really look forward to hearing that argument.
And I'm not arguing for being more accommodating - I'm arguing for calling a spade a spade. To kick a group of people out of almost every discussion forum, then accuse them of having a "persecution complex", is hypocritical in the extreme.
> If you want to argue that we should be more accommodating towards assholes
Not once did I argue that they should not have been excluded, or anything even remotely similar, yet almost everyone who replies insists on putting words in my mouth. Given how straight-forward my posts were, I'm going to assume this misreading was deliberate.
Sorry I can't read your mind.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-h...
Obviously that's simplified, but I think you can see how the dynamic plays out.
The victims aren't gamergaters or feminists or whatever. It's humanity.
(keep in mind that every time that they have to move, their numbers are diminished along the way)
I wish we could all accept our differences more civically, but I don't know how we can make that happen.
[0] I fully expect antifa to get stronger after this.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
I think the kind of rationalizing you're doing is not much different from the rationalizing people on the other side of the political spectrum do. I had similar discussions with people from the other side and they argued similarly to you. I think your quote is broadly applicable to both sides as well.
Also, personal attacks, which you crossed into, are not allowed on HN and will get you banned here. Please don't do that again.
So which is it? Serious or not? How do we know which is which?
> they're just saying it for the sport of calling the bluff of anonymous people they perceive as trolls or brooding teens.
By what definition of the term is this sport? If anything it's callous, and probably illegal in most jurisdictions.
Welp, they're not the same, and /pol/ isn't the same as /b/, or the end of that particular rabbit hole either.
As much as it is a terrible place, it is also probably the most diverse place in the internet and I sometimes wonder if by exposing each other to diametrically opposed ideas, they temper each other out. I really hope some sort of researcher is archiving it for posterity because I don't think there has ever been an experiment like it.
I mean... you're posting this in a thread about a /pol/ user committing mass murder due to his racist and anti-semitic ideals... and he wasn't even the first to do so.
So... no?
Dylann Roof's letter to Tucker Carlson
Who's this Katie Hopkins?
South Africa
accept the jews or you will lose
You're buying cryptocurrency, right anon?
White men who cant get a white woman should bleach a good looking brown girl.
Why should we bother?
DOXX REPORT:ANTIFA MEMBER IN NATIONAL GUARD
8ch got a search warrant 6 weeks ago (two months)
Join the marines
Hungary is BASED
99 turkroach overflight violations on Greek airspace in a single day.
/leftypol/ explains why they’re marxists
Music Video shows White Kids in Cages, Tortured
/SIG/ Self Improvement General
Would things be different if America became natsoc instead of Germany?
Lesbian NASA Astronaut attack on bus in Camden Town London with her date
Ontario Anon Goes Shitposting IRL
homeless anon tip thread
AJ got framed, again.
Rockefellers and the Anglo Industrialist Dynasties
Saint Tarrant pleads NOT guilty!
RIP Léon Degrelle
China Cucks to Hong Kong
Brenton Tarrant Memetic Warfare Thread № XII
requesting knowledge of the Weimar Republic
White Victims of Black Crime - Thread #010: Remember lads, subscribe to Pewdiepie
"Durr Trump is a Jewish sellout!"
Should the Flyover states just secede From the Union
Single Mother Documentary
New leaked doc shows the USA and trump gets raped by mexican rapists
The implication of Feminism just being a shittest for society.
Average jews.
If We Don't Globally Collapse Within The Next Two Decades, Humanity Is Doomed to Extinction
Holocaust Is Fake History - 8968
Paid Shilling Hours
Druid/pol/ #0032 "Esoteric Operations" edition
Nick Fuentes sells out to the Jews and tells a Jewish lawyer he denounces anti-semitism
We lost 4chan
White males Highest Suicide rates in the Country
Sol Pais 2nd thread
Asian hate/redpill thread 2: kill all Asians edition
Yellow Vests protest for 31st straight week in Paris
Doctor E.Michael Jones is apparently being blamed for the latest Synagogue Shooting.
Was Spanish Caste system the best system
/ECO GENERAL/ III - Summer Edition
Trans "rights" are child abuse
/pol/ WEBM Thread / MP4 Thread
/RPG/ Redpill general
Antifa wants you to deplatform "fashy farmers"
On the topic of race and gene editing.
The Rule of Goats: even if you say you're only fucking goats ironically, you're still a goatfucker
—-Popehat
But the crux is that these people are not serious (though I'm sure some are), they're just saying it for the sport of calling the bluff of anonymous people they perceive as trolls or brooding teens.
It's like the scene in Futurama where Hermes is threatening to jump off a building to his death and Bender says, "Do a flip!"
This doesn't make it right. And doesn't absolve them of the legal hot water they'd find themselves in. But I hope these individuals, if charged with a crime, get lawyers who will vigorously defend this point.
Edit: I want to re-state that I emphatically do not hold any opinions on this topic. I'm just trying to share a bit about what these image boards can be like.