Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the chat-room dept
This week, both our winners on the insightful side come from the long conversation on our post about the deplatforming of Parler. In first place, it's Bloof with a response to the notion of the censorship of conservatives academia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Watchlist
Remember when conservative AstroTurf group, Turning Point USA tried to set up a list of liberal professors for targeted harassment?
Remember when Jordan Peterson planned to use his platform to attack left wing professors and subjects?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_Weiss
Remember how Bari Weiss built her entire career on trying to get professors she disagreed with fired by making false allegations against them?
Damn the left and their censorship and attempts to purge the ranks of academia... Oh wait.
In second place, it's PaulT responding to a comment complaining about the Parler bans:
"So it's okay for the cool kids to blacklist the outcasts. Welcome to eighth grade."
No, it's OK for companies to refuse service to customers they believe will hurt their business by serving them. Whether that's because you refuse to put on a shirt or because you were involved in violent criminal activity is meaningless. Welcome to the adult world.
"The LIBERAL definition of "hate" is what rules"
No, the real world definition of hate, which includes beating a police officer to death during an attempt to violently overthrow a legal electoral process. That applies to anyone doing such things, no matter their political viewpoint, but only one group has done that recently.
"If it's that horrible make it illegal"
It is illegal, which is why so many people are being arrested.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start with a comment from That One Guy about Arizona prosecutors pretending "ACAB" is gang lingo:
Way to prove them right
Because nothing is going to make people less angry with police and the legal system that protects them like rampant and open abuse of the legal system to inflict as much suffering as possible on anyone who dares point out how corrupt the police and the legal system have become.
If they are trying to escalate tensions and distrust between the public and the police then they are doing an excellent job of it, if that's not the goal however then everyone involved needs to be fired immediately as not just incompetent but actively harmful to the public and the agencies they are working at.
Next, we head back to the post about Parler for a comment from TFG responding to another complaint about supposed conservative censorship and the accusation that people responding were unfairly speculating about the commenter's views:
Then don't force people to speculate by refusing to provide specifics and instead going with generalities.
Understand that we've seen all this before. "Conservative thought is being suppressed!" the person says.
"That's concerning if true!" We reply. "To enable a reasoned discussion, which conservative thoughts are being suppressed?"
"Conservative thought in general!" comes the reply.
"But that does not allow for discussion or actual action to be taken."And then it devolves into nonsense, as the person claiming that conservative thought is being suppressed retreats into the assumption that people asking for specifics are attacking them, and reveals that they've bought into ideologies that they call conservative but in reality are fascistic, racist, or conspiracy theories.
This trains everyone who comes across the argument to treat it as yet another instance of the same tired old nonsense. The actions of others, which are comparable to your own, lead to everyone being too weary of this shit to give it a fair shake. So please break the pattern, and when asked for specifics, give some specifics.
You want to have a reasoned discussion? Then be socially intelligent enough to be reasonable, and tell us exactly what conservative views are being suppressed.
Part of the reason for highlighting that particular comment is that, over on the funny side, our first place winner is Stephen T. Stone, who chimed in with a response to its closing question:
Oh, you know the ones…
In second place on the funny side, it's James Burkhardt quipping about concerns that journalists are less able to monitor Parler on the systems that have let it come back:
How so? does Epik have a sweet ass captcha that determines if you are a journalist?
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with another comment from Bloof, this time on our post about Turkish President Erdogan:
Thanks to his handling of covid, the internet, whistleblowers, journalists and the truth, the Florida GOP have already tapped him for a gubernatorial run once Ron DeSantis leaves office.
Finally, it's z! responding to a commenter who claimed, and I quote, "No, democrats hold 20th century traditional soviet values":
You have an extra comma in there.
That's all for this week, folks!
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We need to ask them what-
traditional values are
The meaning of Conservative
What are the actions of a Conservative
What/which religion they belong to, and the last time they went to Church
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I don't understand why people on Techdirt won't accept that conservative voices are being silenced, when it's obvious to anyone watching this Netflix documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2DA1uwVsdE&t=1m48s
(couldn't find how to crop just the right part, and I do recommend watching the whole thing from the start)
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I finally make insightful, and they get the screenname wrong. Ah, well.
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Re:
thanks for the link (and no real argument of substance in your comment).
Here's my rebuttal (in the form of something similar to a link):
# vlc /dev/zero[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
I don't understand why conservatives can't recognize the difference between silencing conservative voices and silencing asshole voices. Or maybe there is no difference?
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Wanna know how I know you didn’t watch the video?
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Re:
Conservative voices are being silenced so successfully that they could arrange an attempted coup in at the capital. That indicates that the silencing is not that successful.
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Re:
Did the fact that I explicitly talked about only the comment and not the contents of the video tip you off?
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Re:
You're right. I missed that as my brain just preprocessed the correct spelling into the sentence.
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To be fair 'repeats same empty claim that others have brought up, then provides link for 'proof'' doesn't exactly inspire someone to take a comment seriously, though in this case people absolutely should check out the video.
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Re:
I would claim you to be blind... because your screen name has no "i", but that would be a cheap spelling-based joke.
Oh, wait... damnit... too late.
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Re:
whoops my bad! fixed
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Re: Re:
Cheers!
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Re: Re:
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Re: Re:
Seconded - hilarious.
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Re: Re: Re:
Well my 'Rebuttal' was trivial (in the mathematical sense). /dev/zero gives an inexhaustible supply of zeros, so my point was easily constructed, and very long.
( It was meant to be an amusing rejection of a link, and, in my humble opinion, no compelling reason to view said link. Clearly I'm just making the jokes for my own benefit though.)
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# vlc /dev/zero$ # vlc /dev/zerowould clearly be just for your own benefit. And
$ vlc /dev/zero # jokeBut
wall 'not a joke'
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Re:
Congrats on making the best of the week! It's a great feeling!
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Re: Re:
"...the difference between silencing conservative voices and silencing asshole voices. Or maybe there is no difference?"
There is a problem insofar as most people who go on record as claiming their opinion is "conservative" tends to get caught on record or in their twitter feed exposing openly racist views, bigotry, or the type of shameless reality denial we've grown used to seeing from the likes of Trump and Mitch McConnel.
And when they get banned for hate speech or other outright ToS-violations they manifest a storm of outrage over their conservative views having been silenced as opposed to the more factual "Getting kicked off twitter for being an asshole".
It's like those stormfront refugees we keep seeing here. The first few arguments are always in a reasonable tone. It's not until their assertions get countered by fact and logic that they break out the arguments backed only by a swastika and a burning cross.
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Re: Re:
Fun part is to Publish their personal comments. Direct from them.
Let them listen to themselves.
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Re: Re: Re:
If you own the fact that you got the boot for being an asshole that's your fault and a perfectly reasonable consequence for your actions. On the other hand if you frame it as getting the boot for being 'conservative' not only is that a vague enough dog-whistle that people unfamiliar with the cry might think you got banned for perfectly acceptable political opinions but it allows you to shift the blame to the platform, as it's their fault for booting you since you did nothing wrong.
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