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Cool people do not want to be associated with nerds. Not real nerds anyway, maybe the entertaining caricatures seen on TV that have the public laugh at their awkwardness and lack of social skills, but nobody wants to be associated with the real thing. It's social suicide.

Quick, blame the Russians for fucking EVERYTHING

Usual attack-the-messenger, just as bad as the attacks on Wikileaks.

Do you have any reason to doubt the evidence so far that the Russians are behind the recent attacks?
Do you have anything other than a caricature of a politician to support the assertion that this is BS from Hillary?
Do you trust the Russians so much that you think there's no way it's them, this has to be a false flag perpetuated by the DNC, the Press, national security experts, and unaffiliated security experts?

No, the point is they created a caricature of a capitalist society as envisioned and described by Karl Marx.

Marx didn't understand capitalism, at all. Neither do the people in charge of China. It will bite them in the ass.

I don't know a thing about his positions, but Trey Gowdy looks like the ultimate caricature of a goober. Everytime I see him on teevee, my eyes cross because my mind is trying to unwarp his features to something somewhat resembling a normal human, as opposed to a muppet that has melted from being out in the sun too long.

And why does congress allow him to do those things to his hair that he does? Every month it's some new abomination against haberdashery.

Interesting that you deem it ok to make jokes about men that would not pass feminist muster if they were made about women.

Creating a caricature? How does 'toxic masculinity' fit that concept? quite well I think.

Calling people names doesn't invalidate their arguments.

Best of luck with this :-/

I once had Disqus account. I made a very mild defence of the guy who makes the Minions movie who made an offhand joke about how he'd always assumed all Minions were male because they acted too stupidly to be female. (An obviously ironic, self-deprecating joke, considering he's well known to voice literally all of them.) And then all of a sudden I have MRAs -- including those suspicious ones with female account names and private comment histories -- dragging me into their various angry nonsequiturs about women, tracking down my previous comments to dissect them, and accusing me of all sorts.

I got to the point where I realised there was no winning with the discussion, that you cannot argue with those who insist on creating a caricature for the purposes of arguing with it, and that I would forever be followed around Disqus by these tedious, angry tools with an endless capacity for illogic and clearly no grasp of compassion or irony.

Deleted my account. And so began my understanding; I'd always felt I was a feminist and been lucky to have strong friendships with women, but I'd never grasped quite how farcically, desperately exasperating misogynists can be.

And then, Brexit and Trump. And now I'm seeking a better way to respond.

That's not quite a fair assessment of their stance. In general they believe that the profit motive applies to scientists as well as business-persons such that scientists will bias their results to get more money just like any salesperson would.

This always relied on reducing scientists to caricatures, that every major climate scientist is living a total lie and has abandoned professional ethics, and is keeping all of this a secret from the rest of us. It's incredibly insulting to a very large number of people who have made professional study the greatest portion of their lives. I think it's as ridiculous an assertion as the one that the drug companies are conspiring to hide a cure for cancer, or the enormous number of people that would be required to hide 9/11 being an inside job.

And climate scientists don't need "global warming" to be real to keep their jobs anyway. The climate will always be changing, and there will always be a climate that needs studying.

I find it interesting that I have become some kind of legendary "SJW", with all these stereotypical "SJW" traits and beliefs that I don't actually have.

To paraphrase the great Anita Sarkeesian: the more you think you aren't affected, the more likely you are.

You can think of yourself to not have those traits or promote those caricatured ideas, but you do and you are. You should listen and believe (another great Sarkeesian line) all the people who say you are those things.

It shows how powerful this kind of labelling is - people just assume you fit their imaginary caricature and don't pay attention to the detail of what you say any more.

Well, first I don't think people are making fun of any labels, they're making fun of *you* specifically. The OP specifically named you, and it looks like the people with mod points got that reference.

Second, again: listen and believe. Details aren't what's important here. It's what people BELIEVE you to be. People believe you are an SJW, just like how certain people are believed to be rapists, racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. Even before any details have come out, or even after a court of law has examined said details and found no wrong doing.

To borrow something you like telling other people: freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. The reputation you earned here is a consequence of you exercising your freedom of speech. Just as the public can socially shame and shun a racist/sexist/homophobe, they can do it to you. Other people are not going to stop practicing their freedom of speech just because that makes you feel uncomfortable. No more than they do to Trump, or Clinton, or Milo, or Anita, or anybody else well known or not.

I find it interesting that I have become some kind of legendary "SJW", with all these stereotypical "SJW" traits and beliefs that I don't actually have. It shows how powerful this kind of labelling is - people just assume you fit their imaginary caricature and don't pay attention to the detail of what you say any more.

Fortunately there are still some people who read with care. I'll admit I'm not always one of them, but at least I do admit it.

And for the record, I would never post a statement like that. To be absolutely clear, in cases like this I don't think that the individual managers are racists. It's an institutional problem, meaning that it's a combination of historical disadvantage and current culture, and blaming individuals is neither fair nor productive.

The prototypical example comes from the 1991 Usenet post The Rise of Worse is Better. The basic idea being that its better to push out something simple and get it into user hands than to always be trying to do the Right Thing. Sort of the larval stage of the concept iterative design (but without any formal planned iterations).

I and just about every designer of Common Lisp and CLOS has had extreme exposure to the MIT/Stanford style of design. The essence of this style can be captured by the phrase ``the right thing.'' To such a designer it is important to get all of the following characteristics right:

• Simplicity-the design must be simple, both in implementation and interface. It is more important for the interface to be simple than the implementation.
• Correctness-the design must be correct in all observable aspects. Incorrectness is simply not allowed.
• Consistency-the design must not be inconsistent. A design is allowed to be slightly less simple and less complete to avoid inconsistency. Consistency is as important as correctness.
• Completeness-the design must cover as many important situations as is practical. All reasonably expected cases must be covered. Simplicity is not allowed to overly reduce completeness.

I believe most people would agree that these are good characteristics. I will call the use of this philosophy of design the ``MIT approach.'' Common Lisp (with CLOS) and Scheme represent the MIT approach to design and implementation.

The worse-is-better philosophy is only slightly different:

• Simplicity-the design must be simple, both in implementation and interface. It is more important for the implementation to be simple than the interface. Simplicity is the most important consideration in a design.
• Correctness-the design must be correct in all observable aspects. It is slightly better to be simple than correct.
• Consistency-the design must not be overly inconsistent. Consistency can be sacrificed for simplicity in some cases, but it is better to drop those parts of the design that deal with less common circumstances than to introduce either implementational complexity or inconsistency
• Completeness-the design must cover as many important situations as is practical. All reasonably expected cases should be covered. Completeness can be sacrificed in favor of any other quality. In fact, completeness must sacrificed whenever implementation simplicity is jeopardized. Consistency can be sacrificed to achieve completeness if simplicity is retained; especially worthless is consistency of interface.

Early Unix and C are examples of the use of this school of design, and I will call the use of this design strategy the ``New Jersey approach.'' I have intentionally caricatured the worse-is-better philosophy to convince you that it is obviously a bad philosophy and that the New Jersey approach is a bad approach.

However, I believe that worse-is-better, even in its strawman form, has better survival characteristics than the-right-thing, and that the New Jersey approach when used for software is a better approach than the MIT approach.

Let me start out by retelling a story that shows that the MIT/New-Jersey distinction is valid and that proponents of each philosophy actually believe their philosophy is better.

Two famous people, one from MIT and another from Berkeley (but working on Unix) once met to discuss operating system issues. The person from MIT was knowledgeable about ITS (the MIT AI Lab operating system) and had been reading the Unix sources. He was interested in how Unix solved the PC loser-ing problem. The PC loser-ing problem occurs when a user program invokes a system routine to perform a lengthy operation that might have significant state, such as IO buffers. If an interrupt occurs during the operation, the state of the user program must be saved. Because the invocation of the system rou

I'm shocked that anyone would think free speech is a good idea!

It isn't. It's a terribly dangerous idea. But then so is the use of force, even lethal force. Yet both are ultimately necessary in their ways.

All speech should be moderated by a team of SJWs to suppress any opposing opinions!

See, now if you truly had free speech, nobody would ever be able to question you on this speech, because that would be impairing your free speech.

Nobody could ever point out to you that the SJW bogeyman was nothing more than a caricature meant to silence dissent and disagreement itself, nobody could have challenge you on your own representations.

All adult material must be censored because "think of the children"! This free speech nonsense must end!

And that example is actually about the Moral Majority side of things, not the dreaded SJW. At least be correct in your attributions.

The SJW who are against adult material are against the exploitation of individuals in the adult entertainment industry, a similar, but different priority.

Twitter should look to the UK, where we have a genuine Thought Police backed by an army of volunteer SJWs:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3739348/Scotland-Yard-ploughs-2million-new-thought-police-unit-snoop-web-users-hunt-trolls.html

I was also going to link a liberal source for this, but the Guardian didn't appear to cover the news and the Independent seems to have removed their rather critical article after realising the liked the idea of a leftist Thought Police:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/scotland-yard-thought-police-online-hate-crime-social-media-trolling-abuse-racism-post-brexit-racism-a7189971.html

Huh, apparently you aren't entirely factual in your representations.

The Guardian also has other articles on the subject. But perhaps you don't want to face them?

There are real questions. Don't blind yourself to it.

Can I ask the people on the left, when did the left start to view free speech as being a bad thing? Do people on the left agree with the current moves towards oppressive censorship or is this simply the ruling class acting on their own?

People on the left have noticed that the right has resorted to less than honest discussion, and challenge them on that, and you don't realize it, do you?

The worst evils are always perpetuated when nobody dares to say "Stop, you shouldn't do that, it's wrong" and while it may seem that that is impairing freedom on the surface, if you don't realize that the actions being stopped are themselves the truth threat to freedom, maybe you need to think a little harder.

I'm sure it's comforting to you, that you think the only reasons for censorship is to suppress valid dissent, that the only people calling for any kind of action are the ones who are the enemies of liberty, but in reality, well, you can see a lot of different things going on, and some of it is very subtle, even misleading on appearances.

George W. Bush receive tremendous amount of hatred. He was even caricatured as a chimpanzee before the practice became officially racist in late 2008.

3. Trump is just a total narcissistic fuckwit who has no idea what he's doing and thinks that his stream-of-consciousness primary success somehow translates into "All people love me and how I act" ... I deem the latter the most probable

I've been fairly certain of #3 for a couple of decades now. In fact, roughly 8 years back when I needed a self-centered, power-mad, casino-owning, billionaire tycoon type to be the ultimate villain for the superhero computer game I was working on, I put in several nods (subtle, so as to avoid lawsuits) to The Donald as being just that type. Players of Twilight Heroes have been (unwittingly, for the most part) beating up his caricature over and over for almost a decade now.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying

Ya think??

Yes. Yes, you are.

The land inside your head appears to be full of caricatures. Truthiness. Trumpsterism. Ideas that feel right to you, so you are sure they *must be* right. Like the idea that mental disabilities manifest as a propensity to blow cash on pointless tat.

To each his own. I thought that the Bajorans and their religious fundamentalism were ridiculous, and that the Sisko character, becoming essentially untouchable very quickly, was just a caricature.

One of the things I agree with "the left" on is their point about prejudging and generalising huge groups of people and treating them all like caricatures of the worst examples they can possibly think of. Obviously they usually talk about not assuming that all 4 billion or so people of Islamic faith are itching to commit mass murder (at which they get the internet equivalent of being spat at (aka called an SJW) and accused of sympathising with terrorists), but it also applies to things like this - suggesting that everyone left aligned is a full-on raving rhetoric-spouting loon who posts on that blogging site with the pictures (I think I have an account, never got into it). #notalllefties, and all that. Yes, there are problems with that on this side too (comparing people to Hitler for being concerned about immigration numbers for example) but it seems our lot have been instantly dismissed as "regressive leftie SJW, go back to tumblr" for showing even the slightest hint of a liberal thought, so many times now that they've completely given up even trying. I'm actually surprised to see my comment at +3, and not -1.

I think what I'm saying is that just because a particular subset of screeching lunatics gets all the attention right now (because it's more entertaining, I guess) it doesn't completely invalidate everything that has even the slightest liberal roots, or necessitate a return to how things were 100 years ago before we started saying that maybe people shouldn't be treated with elevated suspicion because they're black, or that actually there are a number of reasons why being more careful with the planet's resources and the amount of pollution we put out is actually quite a good thing for the world, etc.

"Morally objectionable" in the case of pensions is basically code word for "something I don't have so nobody else should either." We get it, you don't have a pension and you're not upset enough to get one but you are upset enough to steal another's. If socialism is equal sharing of misery, then by God you fit that caricature of a socialist! Oh, but the icing on the cake is that you've declared that having more than you, even just a little bit so (because next to nobody is getting rich on a government pension), is bad (ie "morally questionable"). What are your feelings on CEOs and bankers, comrade? Oh, I'm sure that's different, because it always is for your kind...

I hereby propose formalizing a nascent medium for expressive critical speech using satirical sculpture with the following term: paro3dy.

With the power of 3D printing at our disposal, these thick cartoons have already shown themselves rich with new methods of mockery. First, of course, is the added detail available with the third dimension, letting the satirist examine an issue from several angles, as it were. There are endless possibilities for caricature, lampooning, burlesque, even complimentary mimicry. You can ape a politician's nonsensical positions using a real ape, for example, with clever expressive details only apparent when viewed from certain vantage points. And your audience need not actually print out paro3dies, as they can be examined and appreciated in all their oblique glory using any 3D object viewer.

Plus moving parts! Easter eggs!

I have a work in mind: a representation of the UK government as a sprawling amoeba sprouting file cabinets and wigs, advancing on various freedoms of its citizens. Perhaps a few video cameras and guns can be poking up as well.

The term "paro3dy" finds no hits in Google other than license plates. I have therefore registered the domain names paro3dy.com and paro3dy.org, thus using the term in international commerce. But I will not trademark it. By dint of first use, I today place the term "paro3dy" into the public domain, forever barring intellectual trolls from absconding with the concept for their own greedy ends. Anyone can use the term freely.

I may make those domains into paro3dy index sites. However, simply tagging any 3D object with the term #paro3dy will suffice to create a virtual museum of satirical statuary.

Were you a small child when the original Ghostbusters came out? I don't remember it being scary at all and I was 9 at the time.

I liked the old one. I liked the new one even more. It has a mostly-fresh rating because it's a decent movie getting good reviews from most critics. Not mind-blowingly great, but pretty good.

Some people have complained about the Kevin character being a caricature of the pretty outgoing socialite ... well, now they know what it feels like to have Louis Tulley be a caricature of your personality (/disability recognised a decade later).

Its like the republicans decided to take every over-the-top caricature that Rush Limbaugh has used to paint democrats and liberal politicians, turn it up to 11 and then install that as the new head of their party.