uRreading2slow

> we're all supposed to be ashamed of porn and sex outside of marriage in the west

So basically, you're not aware of any of the stuff I'm referring to, and reroute it to what you do know. It isn't the weakest possible interpretation of what I wrote, it's completely out of bounds -- there is no way you honestly think I'm referring to extramarital sex with "horrible, vile stuff" and "excessive dehumanization". And it's pointless and a bit unfair, because I can't show you anything, and even to just describe it in detail would ruin my day.

I don't feel anything I'm "supposed to" either -- including this idea that if someone is into X, and it's legal, you can't say bad things about it, but they can say good things about it all day long. Because "it's a thing", and once it's a thing, it's just there in the world as an item to pick off the shelf and consume, and the cardinal sin is to have any opinions on the choices of other consumers. All that matters is that someone wants something, and that it's legal. People are into things because they are into them, end of discussion, and in many cases also end of reflection.

That's like one "camp", and anyone who has anything to say about that other than "awesome" has be be conservative, religious, whatever. It's like many conflicts, try to talk sense to hawks on either side and they cannot imagine you as anything but a "supporter of the other side". If you can imagine shame and horror only as response to social conditioning, religious upbringing, and so on, you by necessity cannot understand where I'm coming from.

If I had the choice to give an earful to anyone who consumes or makes movies and games and music, as someone who gamed a lot, loves music (but to be honest kinda stopped watching a lot of movies) or to anyone who makes or consumes porn, porn doesn't even enter consideration. But the subject at hand was porn, and while I don't think the person I responded to meant it that way, taken literally they said that any adult site, i.e. all of them, is nothing to be ashamed of. That is the only reason I responded, that's too broad for me to agree.

I generally agree, but in this day and age, there is also real horrid, vile stuff... just follow banner ads on random free porn sites and you'll find a lot that is more an excessive dehumanization arms race than anything to do with sex.

People don't have to be ashamed of it in the sense that they didn't choose to get so damaged to be attracted by it, but abuse and it's consequences is a major elephant on the couch of the porn industry, and I also don't feel a shred of shame for not lumping it all together into one giant bag of "it's all fine", just like I can't lump it together as being all bad.

To each his own also means that I see what I see, and judge it as I judge it.

If you have issues with protecting children from harm by predators, apart from that kind of being a red flag, I would rest assured that any kids ideally will be adults one day, with their potential heavily influenced by what they went through as "mere kids". Think of it as a really cheap way of helping adults.

It's pre-emptive in that it doesn't address any of it, you just says that "this" has been said about other things, supposedly implying that since this somehow refutes even one sentence in the article, making all discussion of any details in it superfluous.

But you don't even have the courtesy to say that, just leave it implied, and then paper that over with some fluff about the Beatles as if that could distract from that. So you "stand behind" stating a triviality and then not saying what you cannot directly defend.

About "older generations rejecting change", that old, dank chestnut... conveniently ignoring all the changes welcomed with open arms by older generations, too, and all the young people who think this stuff stinks. It's a fake narrative to skirt actual argumentation. More importantly, resistance against these methods, as well as the people who rationalize them, is just as much "progress" as is inventing and employing them.

> People have been saying this

What is "this", in this context? The article isn't 1% as shallow as your pre-emptive dismissal of it.

> Maybe we should be, though? [..] Great. I'm not sure that should top your list of injustices, though. It doesn't top mine, because it's not one thats happening in my back yard.

So do you think we should care, or shouldn't we? If your point ultimately is no, we should not care, then why not be honest and say "but we shouldn't care, and here's why".

And how can you claim "nobody" cares? Are you sure there aren't people in many countries who wish companies wouldn't just deal with their butcherers, but give the oppressed a voice? If you don't care, just say it.

It's not about where it happens, it's about whether my "friends" are involved in it. If Google didn't use this site as a PR platform, too, there'd be no point in talking about it. But since many people here use their products, because they claim a "Hi fellow Kids" kind of humanness, it is relevant. When some total stranger acts horrible to others, but they can handle it themselves, I probably wouldn't bother getting involved. But if that guy was chatting to me 5 minutes prior to that, and considers himself someone on good terms with me, I would absolutely at least say something.

It doesn't matter what's on "top" of the "list of priorites", it only matters that it matters, and that I have a position on it I must make known or be complicit by silence. It's really simple, we understand that intuitively in all sorts of situations, it doesn't get more complicated because the behaviour to have a position on gets worse. Totalitarianism in a country claimed to be on the way to become superpower #1 is on such a vastly different scale than anything else you could bring up. It's threatening the very canvas on which you might otherwise drawn and write and rank things. It's not in your backyard, you are in its backyard.

I'd be perfectly fine with Google doing business in China and otherwise shutting up. But they'll parade their new awesome whatever, and that's not okay. Pick one, make your bed and then lie in it. Just consider the Noam Chomsky talks at Google:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnLWSC5p1XE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3PwG4UoJ0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C-zWrhFqpM

It's not a matter of my priorities. They do not get to decorate themselves with the feathers of Noam Chomsky, they do not get to speak on subjects like discrimination, as important as they are, as long as they play along with builders of concentration camps. My moral compass doesn't even enter into any of that. If the whole "make information accessible" stuff hadn't become a bit of a joke a long time ago, I'd add that, too.

> If you do a commercial, you're off the artistic rolecall - everything you say is suspect. You're a corporate whore. There's a price on your head and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink. End of story.

-- Bill Hicks

Same thing with any sort of ethical or intellectual claims and then dealing with butcherers. Super basic stuff, really.

And that "it's all connected", that hardly anyone isn't somehow involved with something that sucks, knowingly or unknowingly, voluntarily or not, doesn't mean you don't do anything. The first step is to not make excuses when others criticize something. It's not even you doing something, it's you not getting in the way of those who are doing something.

> But what about their record? I don't know, what about ours?

You started your comment with "It doesn't excuse them"...

> Strikingly, no concern was voiced over the glaringly obvious fact that no official reason was ever offered for going to war -- no reason, that is, that could not be instantly refuted by a literate teenager.

-- Noam Chomsky