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SXSW Reinstates Panels On Harassment, Adds All-Day Harassment Summit (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: On Tuesday, the South by Southwest Festival announced that it had canceled a pair of panels about online harassment after receiving threats involving them. The cancellation generated a massive outcry, including threats from media organizations to withdraw their support for the festival. Now, SXSW has announced that they're reinstating the panels as part of an all-day summit dedicated to talking about online harassment. They said, "By canceling two sessions we sent an unintended message that SXSW not only tolerates online harassment but condones it, and for that we are truly sorry. The resulting feedback from the individuals involved and the community-at-large resonated loud and clear. While we made the decision in the interest of safety for all of our attendees, canceling sessions was not an appropriate response." They've scheduled more than two dozen speakers for the event, and they plan to stream it live online. "Online harassment is a serious matter and we stand firmly against hate speech and cyber-bullying. It is a menace that has often resulted in real world violence; the spread of discrimination; increased mental health issues and self-inflicted physical harm."
Harassment isn't a growing problem; it's getting media attention at this time.
Throughout all of history, even in the Victorian age, people have fucked other people's wives; why do you think mistresses are a long-time common theme of a man's life in old stories, or weddings end with something about reasons two people shouldn't be married? The priest isn't asking you if the bride is a lying bitch; he's asking if the bride's dad secretly fucked the groom's mom one drunken night and so the dude is marrying his sister. We have a huge narrative about how the moral fiber of society is degrading, how teenagers are starting to sexualize themselves, how you never had people fucking their teachers in the 1920s or 1950s, teen pregnancy is the new thing, etc; all of that's been a constant theme through history, and teachers kept on fucking 12-year-old schoolgirls right through the ages where we pushed marriage from 12 to 18.
The same narrative is happening with harassment. It's a problem, sure; it's not a new or growing problem, though. Harassment has been with us since man figured out how to call some other man an ignorant little shit in front of his friends in order to elevate his own social status. Now instead of being afraid to leave your house because the big kid from school is waiting around the corner to jump you and give you a wedgie, you're afraid to get on Facebook because the big kid from school is waiting to tell you your tits are too small. Same shit, different day.
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If you're an adult, you got over being called names. Expecting others to sanitize your environment wherever you go is insanity.
So you're accusing "SJWs" of bigger threats of actual violence than the ones that caused SXSW to cancel the panels in the first place?
Trolls have never once tried to pass legislation destroying the very foundation of free speech. They've never bullied a single university into kicking out students for daring to challenge the accepted liberal/feminist/race-hustling narrative. They've never threatened to alter the content of my videogames/movies/TV shows/etc. to portray some artificial liberal construct of "reality." AFAIK, they've rarely, if ever, drum-headed anyone out of their profession for saying the wrong thing.
They just occasionally shoot their virtual mouths off with hollow threats and juvenile insults.
So yes, SJW's are VERY MUCH so more of a threat to most us in our everyday lives than any trolls ever will be.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Yes. In fact, I'd argue that SJWs created the controversy in the first place. This is typically what happens:
1. Find some collection of attributes or institutions in the target cultural context to dominate. In this case, gaming/technology.
2. Feign offense and put on a victim routine, the louder the better. I believe they call it 'signal boosting'.
3. Use this victim status to garner sympathy and thus political power within the target organizations.
4. Use this power to 'reframe the narrative', ie dominate the discussion before it even begins.
5. Extract whatever cultural relevance this group has and use it to 'signal boost' up to the next target. When it inevitably dies, abandon the husk and move to the next target.
Yay for parasitical political philosophies!
I'm hopeful that one day this trope will be as unfashionable as the ones about women.
I hope instead that no one will care about your bullshit. Worrying about what name people get called is a sign that civilization had brought us to a wonderful place where we have no real worries, and as a sort of auto-immune disorder, we obsess on this meaningless BS. Get over it, and become happier. Enjoy this wonderful civilization and its fruits. You live better than 99% of everyone who has ever lived, stop searching so hard for something to complain about.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.