Today, in things that actually happened:
1) A fan of right-wing “journalist” and #GamerGate panderer Milo Yiannopoulos has set up a White House petition to demand that Obama “issue a statement demanding the restoration of Milo Yiannopoulos’s Twitter verification badge.”
According to the petition, Twitter’s removal of the little blue verification badge from Milo’s account — a Twitter perk given to a teensy fraction of its users — means that it is “effectively declaring war on libertarian and millennial voices by punishing the outspoken commentator for his views.”
2) Meanwhile, on Twitter, the subject of all this drama — who still retains all his posting privileges on the social media platform — has been complaining “jokingly” that David Bowie’s death has drawn attention away from his plight.
How come David Bowie is verified, @twitter? HE'S FUCKING DEAD
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) January 11, 2016
David Bowie's last words said to have been "Feminism is cancer"
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) January 11, 2016
IF THIS PETITION GETS 2,000 SIGNATURES IN THE NEXT 2 HOURS I WILL SING A BOWIE SONG LIVE ON A YOUTUBE STREAM https://t.co/MxDAXtqRXK
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) January 11, 2016
Happily, the petition did not get 2000 signatures in those two hours, or at all. As I write this, the petition stands more than 98,000 signatures short of the 100,000 needed for the White House to even officially notice it.
Rest in Peace, David Bowie. And go to hell, Milo.
“declaring war on libertarian and millennial voices”
Well, if other millennials feel more secure about speaking out on social media now that Twitter has sanctioned one of the main purveyors of hateful rants, then it’s actually a net win for freedom of speech. How many people were bullied and silenced over GG?
As for libertarian voices, I doubt this is going to have the slightest impact on the yammering. It’s impossible to silence people who believe no one else matters but them.
re: DINOSAURS!
No no no! Brontosaurus is a thing again! Or, is a class of things! A giant-stomping-thunder-lizard class of things!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brontosaurus-is-back1/
Children rejoice! Brontos are reeeeeeeaaaalll!
😀
Spaceman:
Why is that less depressing? What matters about these demagogues is not so much that they’re vile, but more that their vileness finds support among many people. I doubt whether Trump has personally assaulted any Mexicans, or torched any mosques, but he’s firing up a large number of belligerent idiots who would be prepared to do just that.
@ Moggie
“who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”
And we know how that turned out.
@Moggie and @Seraph4377
My intention came out poorly through bad word choice on my part. Sorry.
I agree with you that people willfully manipulating folks for their monetary and social gain is worse.
What I tried to get across (very poorly) was that it is likely these people do not truly believe what they say. That if they ever came to true power, their facade and character would likely fall to the wayside for their sincerely held beliefs.
But reading through that thought process now it seems really shallow and naive of me to say. I still do believe most of them are complete fictional characters. But that actually making things better is clearly not true.
I hope Milo’s new account turns out to be an SJW/FBI honeypot, tricking Gamergaters into releasing their real names and addresses to the government via petition.
I mean, how do you know its really Milo? Huh? He doesn’t even have a blue checkmark.
Drifting further off-topic, but I just had flash through my mind a memory of a little animated short called ‘Snake Theater’ from one of the big animation festivals back in the late 80s or early 90s.
“Next week, Snake Theater presents, The Seven Samurai!” Switch to a view of a stage with seven snakes on it, all wearing samurai helmets, with swords lying next to them because they don’t have any hands to hold them. One snake looks pointedly down at the sword, then goes, “What are we supposed to do with these?”
@ sevenofmine
Um, no, that was pretty much what you said. Like here:
It just had a hint of strawmanning about it, too, I find.
@ Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
During the Bone Wars perhaps, but we still mustn’t ignore that Marsh was one of the greats of palaeontology before such squabbles (for the benefit of people who had never heard of him!) He’s still very much a hero of the field.
Sevenofmine :
Nparker said what I was going to, probably better than I could.
I comprehend just fine. Your point was crystal clear to pretty much everyone with the ability to read.
You have a good night.
@nparker
Not really trying to butt in here, but raysa did say, for example:
“At best, twitter is redundant.” (Not “redundant, for ME”.)
“All this media that is referred to as social is actually the opposite. It’s like standing in a room full of people, and talking loudly about yourself” (That’s “all”, not “parts of” or “most of”.)
They also said they “hate” twitter. Not that they “hate using twitter”, or “hate aspects of twitter”, but they hate twitter itself.
This is pretty dismissive, considering twitter has undoubtedly been useful in certain ways. The sentiment is, since I personally can’t think of a way in which X has helped ME, X must be stupid and I hate X.
I don’t think it’s strange to suspect this attitude comes from privilege.
EDIT: Maybe I should’ve adressed this to raysa. I didn’t see the most recent comment before I wrote this. I’m off to bed and can’t respond any more in (probably) a few days, so I apologize if this comes across as a hit & run. Wasn’t meant that way.
Oy, ok, I wasn’t saying I HATE TWITTER AND EVERYONE SHOULD HATE IT BECAUSE IT DOESN’T HELP MEMEMEME!!!
I was speaking only about my feelings about twitter. Not for anyone else.
Having Internet access is a privilege that I couldn’t afford for a very long time. And now it’s from privilege that I don’t like twitter? Talk about nit picking and overkill.
But, I will just go ahead and say that I am a privileged asshole for hating twitter (only for me, not speaking for a group here). Maybe then we can all move on from my massive privilege.
You know, if you don’t like Twitter, you could just not use it.
@raysa
I honestly think you’ve completely missed the point of sevenofmine’s comment. You said in your original comment that Twitter is just people talking about themselves and what they had for lunch, thus minimizing actual important stuff that has been made possible by Twitter. If that’s not what you meant to say, then fine. But others can only react to what you did say.
Also, privilege is not all or nothing. You can still have white privilege while being poor, male privilege while being gay, etc. This really shouldn’t be news.
And now I really am going to bed. Sorry. :/
EDIT: OK, katz really said it all there. If this is truly just about you not liking Twitter, then… just don’t use it. I don’t like basketball but I bet you had no clue about it until just now.
Everybody here has a valid point to make about Twitter.
It’s really useful.
And it’s really trivial.
(Kind of like books and magazines and movies and TV and the Internet.)
Nobody’s trolling here.
PS: Raysa, I’m sorry your feelings were hurt.
@ dhag85
My point, though, was that sevenofmine did indeed say what raysa said they did, but sevenofmine basically denied it.
“I don’t think it’s strange to suspect this attitude comes from privilege.”
That wasn’t my point though- whether it is strange or not is immaterial. What I find strange is that sevenofmine denied saying what they did actually say. Raysa was responding with actual points, and sevenofmine simply claimed, condescendingly, something about reading comprehension, without actually saying anything else at all.
Raysa also makes a good case. Twitter very well may be redundant, but whether or not it is isn’t what I was saying about. Claiming someone is obviously privileged because they express an opinion one disagrees with is never helpful, especially when raysa rose some perfectly valid points that were outright steamrolled not by a response, but with an insult that specified that raysa had not presented the point correctly when they had (as a quick glance back shows.)
I also, should maybe be addressing this to others. Same with me too, I don’t want to come across as a sort of hit and run!
Wow, ok. First off, ‘just don’t use it then’ is not helpful in any way. It doesn’t address anything, and is rather dismissive.
Its a way to shut down any and all criticism.
If I complain about, say, gratuitous swearing in an episode of Doctor Who, a family show, would anyone here be saying ‘just don’t watch it then?’
@ Kat
I agree- everyone has a valid point to make about Twitter, and I think some of us seem to be forgetting that.
Like the White House would do anything even if it did get 100k signatures. Internet petitions are a fucking joke.
This becoming about me is making me really uncomfortable. I got irritated at the response that my reading comprehension was off and I then addressed the insult. I don’t appreciate being indirectly called stupid, and I couldn’t let that go by.
I just offered an opinion, apparently very unpopular and not welcomed. I think I am allowed to dislike lots of things and not be called privileged because of it. I just can’t believe that if I don’t like something, don’t use it, that it’s some kind of privilege. That’s overkill. TO BE CLEAR, only speaking for me, not saying that things I dislike should be eradicated because ME.
I consider myself to be very sensitive to the privileges that I do have. To have it inferred that I am too stupid to read AND to stupid too recognize privilege is really insulting.
Anyway, thanks to Kat and Nparker for seeing my point. It’s appreciated.
Talk about first world problems. Sheesh!
As if our President doesn’t have so many more pressing issues to deal with than this silliness.
Totally off-topic:
Victorious Parasol: I keep meaning to ask, are you by any chance a fan of Gail Carriger?
@scented fucking hard chairs
I was to be honest looking at whtm even before I started commenting. And yes I know that these shmucks are pretty anti semetic.
You know, at this point I pity Milo. I mean it’s sad enough that he a grown man is throwing a tantrum like a 5 year old over this but asking a President he clams to hate to help him? I mean damn also way to keep it classy with all those David Bowie tweets dude, well done.
They say that they’re opposing twitter because twitter “declared a war on libertarians,” so they’re demanding that the government uses “forceful coercion that is coercive force” to make the private business change their policy?
That’s just perfect.
Whenever I hear people say stuff like that Twitter is nothing but drivel, or that social media is nothing but drivel, it always comes off just as “It’s different from my youth, so it’s stupid!” To me.
Did any other Britain-based mammotheers notice how cold it’s suddenly gotten since Yiannopoulos lost his tick? We may need to do something before he ends up unleashing the White Walkers on us.