RE: Known Anonymity: The End Of The Internet Troll?
Nice post, @cryptogee, my thoughts are that racism used to mean being bigoted against someone, or treating them differently because of their skin color. That was all it meant, it was plain and simple, cut and dry. Nowadays, the institutions of higher education have in essence brainwashed people with their redefined version of racism which is 'every thing is racist'. The people who buy into this idea that everything is racist are educated fools. They can't get over the fact that the education that they spend tens of thousands of their parent's hard earned currency on was actually a colossal waste of both money, and time. I think most of these so called racist people on the internet are just trolls. These new generations of people that buy into the disinformation campaign that 'everything is racist', they walk around with a vest on, each one of these vests has a myriad of buttons. Buttons are for pressing. The trolls who are triggering these idiots, although offensive, are probably doing the world a service in desensitizing them. I'd like to think that a majority of these trolls are real human beings, who would do the right thing in any given situation. Do your part internetizens, and trigger someone today! Simply by not being a fake virtue signaler is enough to trigger people nowadays. For example, Haiti looks like a shithole. I would neither like to live, or visit there.
Maybe the amount of trolls is an equal and opposite reaction to the social justice warrior nonsense?
Interesting point of view, and if I'm to understand your argument, then I would say that you're boiling it down to a chicken and egg scenario, whereby the 'everything is racist point of view' is the chicken, and the troll is the egg.
I would agree in some cases, where by it's clear a troll is trying to gain a reaction from someone they believe to hold overly politically correct views.
However your point about this entire movement of politically correct behaviour coming entirely from a higher education system is perhaps wide of the mark. Ultimately, no matter what you say, or feel about political correctness, it comes from a place of simply trying to be nicer to each other.
It comes from a place of understanding that certain types of language, or reinforcement of negative stereotypes, can cause animosity, and in some cases violence towards certain groups of people.
We saw something like this in Brazil a few years ago, whereby increasingly negative and violent language was being levelled towards homosexuals. This was reinforced by certain politicians joining in the rhetoric. Soon it became OK to joke about bashing gays, I'm sure in many instances these words were defended by the 'it's just a joke' defence.
This culminated in a 15 year old boy being beaten and tortured to death whilst being taunted about being gay. The point of the story wasn't whether particular incidences of hate speech were connected to the death. It was more that in general for a brief period of time, it was acceptable to target homosexuals both verbally and physically.
Sure perhaps in trying to safeguard, perhaps we go too far the other way, however you must recognise the difference between saying a particular country looks like a shithole, is different from saying a certain type of person should be exterminated or beaten up.
Unfortunately some social justice warriors, give social justice a bad name.
Cg
There are a couple different types of racist trolls. Ones that meet the original definition of what it once meant to be racist, and ones that fit into that new definition where everything is racist. I prefer the more sophisticated trolls, who aren't racist, but also won't be cowed into not speaking their mind. The funny thing is, people like Paul Watson; he's trolling social justice warriors hardcore, and all he's doing is speaking his mind. Basically, like the king has no clothes allegory. Everyone knew it in their minds, but they didn't want to say it out loud because they were terrified of the consequences. We shouldn't have to be afraid to express ourselves with the words that are rattling around in our heads.
The US is a little more laid back than the UK but the shift that they tried to implement, it happened to quickly, so much so that they're simply going to fail at their agenda. Unless their agenda was to simply move the overton window. What you said about giving social justice a bad name, makes me think that their may be a different type of social justice advocate who doesn't engage in insane zealotry? In my mind this is social justice. When I first saw that clip it was funny and ridiculous, but then things started happening here in the U.S. Things that mirrored the types of things that happened in that ridiculous video. Like for example the shrieking girl at Yale who was flipping out over Halloween costumes, or the incident at Evergreen State college.
The crazy part is social justice warriors would accept me with open arms if I identified as an multidimensional unicorn. So it's all about catering to what people think they are, yet the moment you say something unpopular you are to be crucified. It's just a bunch of mind boggling weirdness to me. But yeah I agree. I don't like real racism, bigotry, or random acts of violence. One of the biggest problems with the social justice movement is that they believe that words that hurt their feelings is the same as violence, and they believe that they can defend themselves from words that they don't like with physical violence. I think they're minds are being intentionally sabotaged.
Wind-up toys that explode when they bump into something. Imagine if instead of teaching social justice, the colleges taught the philosophy of liberty. Magical things would have happened!