Anthony Flack wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 4:59 pm Heck a young FM steve was even contemplating naming an album after Quentin Tarantino's favourite word at one point, but then thought better of it and later started a band called Rapeman instead. It really was a different time.

Yes, but he's eloquently and unflinchingly taken his younger self to task for this. Which is appropriate, and adequate. No cancelation necessary.

Anthony Flack wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 4:59 pm
We can't stop an extremist US Supreme Court from chucking the Voting Rights Act on the fire. We can't stop white supremacists from seizing power. We can't save ourselves from environmental collapse. We can't prevent genocides from happening around the world (so much for "never again"). I can't help but feel that pillorying well-intentioned people for minor offences is often just a way of deflecting from all the vast horrors that we feel helpless against.

Piling on some rando on twitter doesn't achieve anything constructive, but it makes you feel like you're doing something and it's SO EASY.

I think there's something to this. Pushing people to be more considerate is a good idea, but I definitely feel you: the culture war stuff gets to be a huge waste of energy.

A friend of mine posted something kind of extreme and philosophical during the BLM protests. We know and trust each other and I argued against his point (something about how we shouldn't write about music, or share photos of art when the world's on fire). Some rando chimed in that she had just poured over everything I had posted from my dumb facebook account and didn't see much social justice warrior shit on there. For one thing, she was wrong because my account is private, for another I told her she was a perfect example of the massive waste of time the woke olympics turn into when privileged white people try and be superior.

Anthony Flack wrote: Mon Feb 14, 2022 4:59 pm Yes but it used to be the right-wingers who were the pearl-clutchers. Leftist agitators didn't use to asterisk out words in grown-up adult writing, or speak in delicately coded language to avoid triggering a soundbite outrage. People wanted to tear down that polite, conservative facade. We used to mock the absurdity of such prudery in a world full of real atrocities. Heck a young FM steve was even contemplating naming an album after Quentin Tarantino's favourite word at one point, but then thought better of it and later started a band called Rapeman instead. It really was a different time.

Everything was "a different time." And most of those "leftist agitators" were white men with some privilege, at least the ones who got any attention from the mostly-white press. It's always the white males who are acting so brave and iconoclastic and transgressive, and then publicly forgiving themselves later when tides shift. It's always been white men who decided when it was time for civility. Now that women, POC and LGBTQ+ people are gaining control of the narrative through media, legislation and social justice movements, white men who have been able to hide their biases because it used to be cool to say the N word and the R word and the C word etc etc are finding they no longer have cover.

Conclusion:

at this point it’s just safer to say “fuck”.

jfv wrote: Thu Feb 17, 2022 4:31 pm Conclusion:

at this point it’s just safer to say “fuck”.

Ironic then that the "fuck your feelings" crowd are the ones avoiding that word in favor of "let's go Brandon"

Chud Fusk wrote: Fri Feb 18, 2022 10:44 am Ironic then that the "fuck your feelings" crowd are the ones avoiding that word in favor of "let's go Brandon"

Man, that one really bugs me. Not because Biden is my favorite guy, but because if you want to throw shade at the president, why be so cute about it?

losthighway wrote: Fri Feb 18, 2022 10:59 am

Chud Fusk wrote: Fri Feb 18, 2022 10:44 am Ironic then that the "fuck your feelings" crowd are the ones avoiding that word in favor of "let's go Brandon"

Man, that one really bugs me. Not because Biden is my favorite guy, but because if you want to throw shade at the president, why be so cute about it?

wasn't this because everyone at a baseball game or something were shouting "fuck you Biden" and the announcer said they were saying "Lets Go Brandon" to try to save the broadcast? It became the joke because the right wing has an entirely basic sense of humor.

"Dunderhead" (pronounced dun-der-heed) was one my father used to use quite a lot, but it only sounds impressive in a Scottish accent.

"Wazzock" is another (as in "you useless scrawny-eyed, parrot-faced wazzock").

A lot to unpack here and I don't want to turn in one of those classic PRF essay-long posts. So here I go!

It's very true that the scene that people like FM steve came out of was very white, very dude. Heck, I've been to Shellac shows - it still is.

Also, disclaimer: I'm not American. American history is SO top-shelf racist, and white America is in such deep, deep denial about it, I'm continually astonished at the depth of that denial and how twisted the mental wiring required to maintain it. The Nazis only wanted their country to be more like the Founding Fathers' America, but white America is raised from birth to believe it was nothing less than the best thing to ever happen in the history of all the world - foundational myths designed specifically for the purpose of maintaining the horrible caste system. The dysfunction is deep. It's no wonder they all have to go to the psychiatrist.

I grew up in the era of flip you melon farmer. I thought the concept of taboo words was ridiculous. But now the prevailing thinking is that the censors were right to spare our ears, only they had the wrong word list. And so we are called on to accept there are some words that really must never be spoken or written down, at least not by members of the privileged caste, or people who look like they might be. That raises some issues for me as a concept, but as good manners, it's fine.

But ok, so where is the line? That's a bad question and I hate it, but people are taking very absolutist stances on things and it's not always clear. Like for example, uhh, Mark Twain audio books. For blind people. Ban them, bleep them, change the text, only have black people read it? Shit, what if a computer reads it? I don't mean to sound flippant about serious stuff. A situation like Kendrick Lamar being offended by his own lyrics seems like a quandary with no entirely right answer. And I'm not sure if Samuel L. Jackson really does have the authority to make Quentin Tarantino an honourary black person.

But absolutist stances smack of authoritarianism to me. I don't like that kind of binary thinking. It leads to shitty things like mandatory minimum sentencing, and ridiculous talk about where to draw the fucking line, slippery slopes and other bullshit. Any sort of reasonable discussion is probably going to conclude, like with everything, well, there is no actual hard line. Have some manners, show some respect and some tolerance, don't be a dick (no offence to dicks).

But people's reaction to things seem to be becoming ever-more hard binary - about EVERYTHING - and I do not like this. I don't think we should get angry at people who aren't trying to be assholes. I can't help but feel that it's the right wing who really have taken control of the narrative: that left-wingers are intolerant and censorious and have no sense of proportion. While they go around banning books and making it illegal to talk about racism.

Also, the right wing has made any kind of debate just shit, frankly. They've poisoned every well with their disingenuous fuckery, so I don't even blame people from going straight to pissed off whenever pretty much any contentious topic comes up.

Wazzock is a good insult as its etymology is entirely uncertain, hooray!

The first and penultimate paragraphs of your post answer the rest.

OH SHOOT