Ship of Fools: What hath Twitter wrought?

Thread: What hath Twitter wrought? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

"Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a devout Mormon and family man, has apologized for homophobic, racist and anti-Semitic comments posted online by his teenage son."

Followed shortly by "Nevada representative Joe Heck, whose 16-year-old son Joey freely deployed" racist remarks too offensive even to post on the Ship of Fools.

And an 11 year old boy singing the National Anthem at a sporting event is the subject of vicious ethnic slurs posted on social media.

An 11 year old boy, for the love of Pete!

Is is that people feel that the cloak of on-line anonymity gives them license to be as hateful and vicious as they can manage to be?

Do these people really believe what they are writing?

If so, what in God's name is the matter with them?

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

I think this is a hell thread, I shall consult.

Doublethink

Purgatory Host

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

{DT, I think there's room for Purg discussion of this, FWIW.}

Nice thread title--adaptation of the text of the first-ever telegraph message. ("What hath God wrought.")

I heard about the boy singer. He's got an awesome voice. From what I heard on the news, some yahoos didn't grasp the "American" part of "Mexican-American". (But he shouldn't have been treated that way, no matter where he's from.)

Some years back, there was a news story about someone trying to by Olympics tickets via phone in the US. Person lived in New Mexico. Phone rep wouldn't sell the tickets, 'cause caller wasn't American! "I'm from NEW Mexico!" "New Mexico, Old Mexico...I don't care!" Quite an embarassing story, at the time.

I'm forever glad the Web wasn't around when I was a kid. I was bullied enough, thank you very much. I can sort of understand the teens who end their lives in response to relentless online bullying.
[Votive]

Anonymity is probably part of the problem. So is not being physically in the same space. Sometimes, it's hard to remember you're dealing with a real person.

[ 14. June 2013, 23:06: Message edited by: Golden Key ]

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Yes, unfortunately they do. Just a few weeks ago there was a firestorm when General Mills put out a advertisement that showed a mixed race girl asking her white mother if Cheerios was good for one's heart. Mother said yes. Next shot black father wakes up with Cheerios all over his chest.

People demanded General Mills take the ad down. GM refused saying they were celebrating the diversity of the American family. (more like selling something using the diversity of the American family)

Deal of it is such comments are really a rear guard action. Whites in America are no longer in the majority and some do not like it one bit.

Eventually, though, things will settle on a new norm.

Posted by Plique-à-jour (# 17717) on :

Other than the fallen human condition, there's nothing the matter with them, they just have more opportunities now to express publicly what previously they would only have said or thought in private. The convenience of social media allows the expression of more visceral, immediate reactions, where once, any means of making an idea public involved a lot of cooling-off time. Some kinds of reaction are seeing the light of day which never would have before. I think it's very useful to know how much visceral hatred has always been concealed by the official public discourse. There's a delusion, common in what might be called vulgar liberalism, that if you educate people enough, they will like you, and agree with you, and the bracing anarchy of social media is a wonderful corrective to that. In truth, there are people who enjoy misanthropy, for whom racism is a tool. They haven't forgotten they're talking to and about real people, its the emotional charge of attacking real people that they draw power from. The anonymity has not made them like this, just given them an opportunity to be themselves.

This is shocking to those who think bigotry must be insurgent, or the result of inadequate education, but the point of education is to allow people to become sovereign individuals. Some people choose, and enjoy, hate. That's the risk you run in a marketplace of ideas. There's something awful in the idea that the 'solution' to this embarrassing reminder of free will is to curtail the freedoms of expression we all currently enjoy. It's like a dictator shutting newspapers down for reporting accurately rather than flatteringly. If the press is telling you things you don't like, the press is not your real problem. The real problem, I would suggest, is what you expect of, and believe about, human beings.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

Part of it is people sitting alone in their rooms in front of a screen, with no clear visualization of the people they're communicating with or the audience out there.

I've said it before, posting anything on the internet is like standing on a street corner handing out your words on a flyer to everybody, without exception, who comes past: housewife, alcoholic, mischievous schoolboy, kindly cleric, someone mentally disturbed, a group of students, passing businessmen and so on.

When you're sitting alone in front of a screen, people don't always have a real sense of others out there, it's just words. It's very easy just to click a button.

Technology can be a good thing, but it does seem to have a worrying effect to do more to disconnect people from reality than enhance life sometimes.

Posted by womanspeak (# 15394) on :

In Australia our female Prime Minister has been attacked on social media in the most vile, offensive and sexually degrading forms throughout the last three years of her leadership.

This has encouraged our versions of the American "shock jock" to even lower forms of disgraceful behaviour towards her. One has just been sacked for the rude / crudeness of his latest interview with her - claiming her partner is gay because he is a hairdresser.

This is not just stereotyping claiming to be backed up by social media's questioning of the relationship, but using Twitter as evidence to personally attack her sexuality and status.

Maybe these "jokes" and personally offensive rumours do exist in the community, but twitter seems to give them some sort of unmoderated validity, particularly when it is used as source material for so called journalists.

Our PM is attacked for having a hard skin, being a tough woman - but this is obviously necessary for her survival. As many have questioned in the past week "Why would any woman put her self in such a position if such foul, filthy and degrading and woman-hating tweets and 'jokes' are now the norm.

Our Head of the Defence Force has just announced the arrest of three and investigation of 100 service personnel for sexually abusive tweets and emails including doctored video of female officers and civilians in sexually explicit and degrading footage.

This behaviour must be named and shamed as evil, not just bullying and sexism. Christians and people of good will have to stand up to this evil for the sake of our community.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

I have always maintained that social media like Twitter simply allow people to communicate wider than they did before, more easily, more people.

On the plus side, it means that I can have some of my offensive comments checked and considered. I can learn from more people as to why my comments are offensive. I can learn from it that something I say is misconstrued (I say this, on the grounds that I would never be deliberately obnoxious to people).

On the other hand, there are people with offensive and obnoxious views who have no desire to learn. It doesn't change their obnoxious positions, just the fact that there are assholes out there becomes a lot more public.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

I think you need more uninhibited expression for this topic.

Doublethink
Purgatory Host

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

OK folks, gloves off!*

Sioni Sais
Hellhost

*Do remember C7 though. Through a lack of care Twitter and similar have had to publish retractions (simple enough for the Ship) and go through expensive legal proceedings (entirely impossible for The Ship). I'm a nag about this but I'm not going to change in a hurry.

Posted by Sarkycow (# 1012) on :

quote:
Originally posted by womanspeak:
This has encouraged our versions of the American "shock jock" to even lower forms of disgraceful behaviour towards her. One has just been sacked for the rude / crudeness of his latest interview with her - claiming her partner is gay because he is a hairdresser.

I heard this interview, and was very impressed with her response. She managed to answer calmly and reasonably, and even mock the jerk slightly.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Just a few weeks ago there was a firestorm when General Mills put out a advertisement that showed a mixed race girl asking her white mother if Cheerios was good for one's heart. Mother said yes. Next shot black father wakes up with Cheerios all over his chest.

I haven't seen that ad, but I'm not sure I'd get the connection between Cheerios and heart health. I'd be more likely to wonder what they were doing in bed to get Cheerios all over them. But then again, I've been accused before of having a dirty mind.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

The content of the tweets by the teenage boys in question is likely to be exactly the same as the content of their conversation with their peers on the schoolyard, or in someone's basement.

We have had other cases where young people (usually, but not always, teenage girls) have been hounded to the point of suicide by sustained bullying over twitter, facebook and the like.

Twitter and facebook aren't changing anyone's character. The people who are posting vile things on facebook now would have been hiding vile notes in lockers and bookbags in my youth. The difference, I think, is that social media is more pervasive.

In my youth, if you were bullied at school, it stopped when you got home, because the bullies had no access. Children didn't have their own telephones, and most bullies weren't prepared to talk to someone's father first.

Today, children have their own cellphones, computers in their rooms and so on, and are continuously available to social media and texting. There's no respite.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

Plique-à-jour makes a good point. I think another factor too is that online, it's easier to find others who think like you do and aren't afraid to express it (if sometimes only anonymously). That leads to mob behavior, as well as a distorted sense of what is "normal" or "acceptable." Even if you still believe you're in the minority (or even a persecuted minority) with your opinions, the fact that you can find people to agree with you seems to confirm your opinion - and the sense that you're somehow being repressed.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Amanda--

There are several Cheerios commercials that push it as a heart-healthy source of fiber. The ads are aimed at men, who, I've heard are considered less likely to take care of themselves. So a child hears that Cheerios are good for the heart, and makes sure their dad or grandpa gets some, in a cute way.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Amanda--

There are several Cheerios commercials that push it as a heart-healthy source of fiber. The ads are aimed at men, who, I've heard are considered less likely to take care of themselves. So a child hears that Cheerios are good for the heart, and makes sure their dad or grandpa gets some, in a cute way.

Yes, Miss Amanda understands. You needn't explain it to her. But as an Aspie, she would be much more likely to scold the child for getting Cheerios crumbs all over Mommy's nice clean sheets than she would be to say, "Oh, how cloyingly cute!"

And secretly, to herself, she would be wondering, with a smarmy grin on her face, just what Mommy and Daddy were doing in bed last night with a box of Cheerios, and does she really have to eat them for breakfast this morning.

[ 16. June 2013, 13:59: Message edited by: Amanda B. Reckondwythe ]

Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:

quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Yes, Miss Amanda understands. You needn't explain it to her. But as an Aspie, she would be much more likely to scold the child for getting Cheerios crumbs all over Mommy's nice clean sheets than she would be to say, "Oh, how cloyingly cute!"

And secretly, to herself, she would be wondering, with a smarmy grin on her face, just what Mommy and Daddy were doing in bed last night with a box of Cheerios, and does she really have to eat them for breakfast this morning.

Now I'm confused

In the first half you seem to be the Mummy. Mummy says something, Kiddie misunderstands. Kiddie puts the cherio's on sleeping Daddy (my guess of what the advert was, I imagine a cut from breakfast table to bedroom)

In the second you seem to have switched perspective to the Kiddie where the Kiddies walked in on Mummy's having put the Cherio's on (I can imagine an advert like this, with a 'bed reveal' type shot).

But at the same time you seem to be treating both as happening in the same advert.

FWIW My first read-through misread it as 'white cherios*' and I thought that was the reason for complaints.

*as supposed to wheetos I guess [Confused]

[ 16. June 2013, 15:35: Message edited by: Jay-Emm ]

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

All right, dear, let's not get sidetracked into what you do or don't understand. Any ad that uses children to hawk product is beneath Miss Amanda's notice anyway.

Let's instead get back to the premise of the OP, which is that despite apparent advances in understanding and tolerance, there are still an awful lot of people out there who appear to hate their fellow man, and are not afraid (at least under the cloak of anonymity) to say so.

The fact that the children of prominent public figures are apparently among those who so hate is especially troubling.

(Of course, there are those of us in Arizona who knew from the start that Jeff Flake was not worthy of our vote, but that's getting sidetracked again.)

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Daddy is sleeping, by himself, on the sofa. Importing details into a story and then making salacious comments about the details YOU imported is stupid.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

The politicians' children were likely saying what their father's believe, that is the worst part.
The anthem singer is American as the racist morons who whined, But the 11 year old child seems to have a superior understanding of what being American is.

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Whites in America are no longer in the majority and some do not like it one bit.

What? Do you have a definition not included here?

Here is the Cheerios advert. I, for one, do not give a rat's testicles what the motivation behind the making. Anything which normalises such relationships is good.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Daddy is sleeping, by himself, on the sofa.

Beat me to it.

So, yeah, Dad is dozing on the couch, kid chats with mom, and walks straight from the breakfast nook into living room to dump the box of Cheerios in her hand on Dad. We do not witness this,we are only treated to the horrific aftermath( to a clean freak.)

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

There's also this cute spoof of the original ad.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

Fabulous! [Overused]

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

LMFAO! "Denise, disable the Youtube comments"
And, yes, [Overused]

Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
There's also this cute spoof of the original ad.

If I were either mom, waking up covered in cheerios would totally be a problem, just saying! (cute)

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
There's also this cute spoof of the original ad.
If I were either mom, waking up covered in cheerios would totally be a problem, just saying! (cute)

There's a spoof by a black comedian in which he plays the first part of the commercial, then casts himself as the dad waking up on the couch, and starts yelling, "Girl, what did I tell you about wasting food? There's kids starving in China" and other things a dad might say in such a circumstance.

Posted by bib (# 13074) on :

Am I the only person who loathes the use of twitter? When I watch programmes on tv I do not want to read other people's often offensive tweets scrolled across the bottom of my tv. This is particularly evident in a panel discussion called Q&A which is shown by the national broadcaster in Australia. Maybe we need a button to turn tweets off.

Posted by Spiffy (# 5267) on :

quote:
Originally posted by bib:
Am I the only person who loathes the use of twitter?

Yes.

(Probably not.)

I really enjoy Twitter because it's given me a very easy way to move my online relationships (which have been my primary social engagement for the last 15 years, I LOVE YOUSE GUYS!) to actual meatspace relationships through the medium of my local soccer supporter's group.

Then again, I don't own a TV so I am not terribly familiar with the scrolling across the screen thing you mention.

I just checked my score, I'm at 23,425 tweets in about three years.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by bib:
Am I the only person who loathes the use of twitter? .

I used to loathe twitter. Now I love it precisely for the tweets which engendered this thread. If those little shits ever run for office, this will bite them in the arse. And, hopefully, it shines a light on their parents as they learned this somewhere.

Posted by Spiffy (# 5267) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:
Originally posted by bib:
Am I the only person who loathes the use of twitter? .
I used to loathe twitter. Now I love it precisely for the tweets which engendered this thread. If those little shits ever run for office, this will bite them in the arse. And, hopefully, it shines a light on their parents as they learned this somewhere.

Rich, white males? Yeah, no, it's going to be society's fault.

Posted by RooK (# 1852) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Spiffy:
Rich, white males? Yeah, no, it's going to be society's fault.

The various homophobes and misogynists endemic to organized religion have nothing on Spiffy. Few have the zeal to inject sexism/racism¹ into a thread about fucking Twitter.

¹ Let alone high-purity bullshit sexist racism. Or is it racist sexism? Either way.

Posted by Spiffy (# 5267) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RooK:

quote:
Originally posted by Spiffy:
Rich, white males? Yeah, no, it's going to be society's fault.
The various homophobes and misogynists endemic to organized religion have nothing on Spiffy. Few have the zeal to inject sexism/racism¹ into a thread about fucking Twitter.

¹ Let alone high-purity bullshit sexist racism. Or is it racist sexism? Either way.

It is a thread that mentions racist comments made by the sons of US Senators that happened to be on Twitter.

While I often wish I had the power to rule the world and control what comes out of people's mouths and keyboards, RooK, I have not yet gained that and therefore I'm not quite sure how this is my fault.

Of course, there was a horrible fire at Fucks Farms this week. Truly terrible. The entire crop of fucks was destroyed. Therefore I am currently unable to give a single fuck about you and your opinion.

Posted by RooK (# 1852) on :

That's it; get back on your one-trick pony and ride! Ride to the next pointless expression of your issues.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Go, Spiffy! And I put your last paragraph on the Quotes thread.
[Smile]

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