Slashdot Mirror
Colleges Struggling With the Digital Bathroom Wall
theodp writes "Back in the day, anonymous character assassination was confined to permanent marker scrawl in bathroom stalls. But now, thanks to sites like the student-run CollegeACB.com (ACB=Anonymous Confession Board), which can get hundreds of thousands of hits on a good day, TIME reports that anonymous slander is going viral on campus. Even the most elite universities — normally the land of the politically correct — have been struggling with the problem of anonymous gossip sites and their very un-PC posts, which an Amherst dean likens to 'the worst of junior high.' If he thinks things are bad now, wait until the kids start getting creative with Google Sidewiki."
Welcome to the internet, please enjoy your stay or GTFO promptly.
Soulskill has herpes!
4chan for Harvard?
Really, it's futile in the long term to try and ban "harassment comments" or whatever you want to call it, unless you want to really compromise free speech and become worse than China. Maybe instead stop being so bloody touchy about stupid things stupid people write? What is it we've told our children for ages - "stop caring, don't give it attention"?
Or perhaps people still don't like other people behaving like asses? We were raised (well most of us) to treat each other with at least civility. It grates when you read or see something like that. That's the whole idea of peer pressure.
I wish they'd do away with anonymous for trivial/unimportant information posts. It serves no purpose other than to bring out the juvenile in everyone.
The name "political correctness" implies the two bad attributes of the phenomenon: That it's political and that it claims to be correct (without justification and in a field with many differing perspectives). Politeness often also has these attributes, but the realization that a new behavior is in some way similar to an old behavior which one didn't question should not compel anyone to agree with the new behavior in spite of better knowledge. PC is a limitation on discussion and therefore a limitation on thinking, which is unacceptable. So fuck you.
Complaints about PC are generally not about any version of right or wrong. They are complaints about being required to use, or avoid, language, which it is claimed might offend someone.
I don't care what language you use and do not want to restrict your use of any particular words. You might care what language I use and seek to impose restrictions. Those two approaches are not equivalents and PC falls into the latter.
Just because two people disagree, it does not mean that both views are equal in some way.
Bill Cosby said some things about his community a while ago that was very un-PC, but he felt it needed to be said. White people have said the same things before (as well as less prominent Blacks) but were then called "racist" or "bigots", then ignored and in the meantime, the problems in the community continued. Of course, all of those problems were always blamed on others and never on the community - ex. not getting education because it was a "white" thing and then being angry and pissed when the only jobs they can get are janitors which then lead to more rancor and beliefs about being oppressed and what not.
And it's not only the African American community it's across all racial and religious lines . Although, it's just that it's PC to say anything about white males.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Political correctness is nothing but a bunch of random rules of communication setup as a system of traps for people who dare speak their mind. It doesn't make any sense except to derail communication from its intended purpose.
When you get white Americans calling European nationals who happen to be black 'African Americans' it's gone too far.
I'm so going to whore karma with this obligatory Penny-Arcade reference.
Mod redundant at will.
Political Correctness is just a new version of Politeness
Political Correctness is not polite. In fact, it is the opposite. PC speak at its core is about deception, and as such is one of the greatest forms of insult to any listener that can read between the lines.
What's the real reason for the schools' objection to it? I always thought it was because it destroyed school property. If it's virtual, then as a student you have to seek it out to see it, rather than seeing it in the bathroom stalls whether you like it or not. Sounds like it was really about control. They want control over what students say to each other at all times. Heaven forbid students organize in various ways without permission.
The difference is that politeness is a style that evolved naturally. Political correctness is an invented newspeak.
It's a dilemma inherent in our choices of technologies.
If we allow anonymity, people will
(a) Use it for good: whistleblowing on evildoers;
(b) Use it for evil: anonymously libelling the innocent;
If we prohibit anonymity, people will
(a) Use it for good: standing by their assertions;
(b) Use it for evil: track every word you say, stifling whistleblowers and witnesses.
There is no right answer. There are only choices between problems.
-kgj
Haha, and sorry nothing citeable here because I'm going to post anonymously for this but I have a black African friend who punched an American who referred to him as "African American" [in UK btw]. What a day that was, sigh..
Hey, I'm an oversensitive pussy, and I find your post extremely offensive and wrong.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Political correctness is just an impossible game of cat-and-mouse using weird terms until the terms become popular and you have to use newer ones, making reading older texts on subjects like psychological disabilities impossible. When you get streaks of renaming like mongolism -> Down syndrome -> trisomy 21 and stupid -> mentally retarded -> mentally challenged -> differently abled (or whatever the current one is) communicating becomes a nightmare.
Have you been encased in a cement bunker for 20 years? "PC" is not just about avoiding overt insults or, say, the fact that we have condom ads on television now with a guy getting his junk buffed in a wind tunnel. When recent polls in the polls in the UK indicate that 80% of the population is tired of political correctness, you have a real problem, not a generation gap.
When people complain about PC, they mean the sort that causes valid or even scientific discussion from even taking place because some hypersensitive miseryshit somewhere might be offended.
It's the sort of PC that chastises a kid in a Halloween pirate costume for wearing an eye patch because it's offensive to the disabled. Oops, I mean differently-abled! Sorry! Don't sue me for causing emotional distress, please! It's curious they never seem to ask an actual other-abled person. No, wait, "other" sounds exclusionary doesn't it? Argh! The low seas of PC be treacherous, me mateys!
Political correctness also seems to be covering hypersensitivity to safety, so you have it applied to cases where trapeze artists are required to wear hard hats or the Army is told to make their training courses safer to the point of, well, pointlessness. That seems odd to me, but the street finds its own uses for words, much like hacker is used in place of cracker by the general population. Language evolves- deal with it.
When you get white Americans calling European nationals who happen to be black 'African Americans' it's gone too far.
Exemplified by the brilliant satire of Sacha Baron Cohen, in Brüno:
Brüno: There's a lot of African Americans in Africa!
African-American Lady: No! There's a lot of Africans in Africa!
Brüno: That's racist!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Owner Peter Frank, a sophomore at Wesleyan University... runs ACB out of his dorm room. The 19-year-old English major... "I'm untouchable," he says.
You don't sound untouchable Pete, you just sound stupid. Especially after letting time.com publish your full name, picture, the city you live in, AND the school you attend. I am thinking that the next year is going to be very educational for you once your site slanders a couple of people to the point that they lose control and decide to take a trip to Middletown with your picture in hand.
I don't have a primary source for this because it was supposedly on TV, but apparently there was a conversation between an American reporter and black British athlete Kriss Akabusi that went something like this:
"So, Kriss, what does this mean to you as an African-American?"
"I'm not American, I'm British"
"Yes, but as a British African-American ..."
"I'm not African. I'm not American. I'm British."
So the supposed big gossip site Juicy Campus folded in February after existing for a whole year and a half. CollegeACB is some site run by an English Major out of his dorm room. If you actually GO to the site, you'll see a lot of old, outdated posts mostly people asking for gossip and very few actually providing gossip. So this is supposed to be the big problem Colleges are worried about?
This is just another lazy journalist creating a story out of nothing.
AccountKiller
"Politically correct" bullshit makes it a crime for anyone to speak out against queer sumbitches who want to get married, and take over the churches, schools, military, or whatever else offends them. Opposition to homosexuality becomes a "hate crime".
Don't ever confuse "polite" and "politically correct".
Polite pretends that the queer isn't a cocksucker. Politically correct demands approval of cocksuckers.
As an incorrigible cocksucking queer sumbitch myself, I would like to take this opportunity to offer to you my sincerest gratitude for your honesty. My partner and I have been denied housing by "polite" people here in Texas who are always be forced to go far out of their way to find some valid excuse to support their obviously bogus decision. Everyone in the room knows the truth, but for some reason, the mores of politeness demand that no one verbally acknowledge it.
Fuck that. It's much better when people just come out and say what they believe. I'm old enough and wise enough now that I truly don't give a shit what people think of me, but they should at least have the courage not to hide their feelings behind a veneer of "politeness." I can respect them for that.
I can understand that. Maybe someone will mod you up. ;^)
I've been denied service a few times in my life. Lame excuses like, "We just ran out of beer" is bullshit. If you were really out of beer, all the rest of the customers would have been on their way OUT as I walked IN. Just tell me that you don't want no sailors hanging around your bar, no white people hanging around your Bar-B-Que, or that you don't like Americans in general.
There's a lot to be said for honesty.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br