NOTE: This post will make a lot more sense if you read this first.
When it came to petting cats, as a slow-moving human with a soothing voice, I had no problem getting headbutts from Chicago’s most beautiful cats.
I could have any cat I wanted. I met some nice adult cats, but invariably I went for the fluffiest, most adorable kittens I could find.
My life was pretty much this:
I petted as many as three kittens a week, many of them cute enough to be kitten gif models, but eventually I realized that petting the cutest young things had its drawbacks — I found them flighty, silly and vapid.
I mean, look at these ridiculous creatures.
Adorable kittens who get a fair amount of attention get full of themselves. Eventually, I was dreading booping them on their tiny kitten noses because they were constantly being distracted by whatever shiny thing entered their field of vision. Literally.
Looking for a cat with a greater attention span than a gnat, I started petting a couple of cats who aren’t cat calendar models. The two are now living in my apartment with me and occasionally vomiting on things. I met them at a local cat shelter.
People like me who don’t mind talking in a baby voice and who aren’t given to sudden, startling movements have the pickings when it comes to petting cats but eventually I found that I wanted a cat of substance, not a ball of fluff.
The cats I pet now couldn’t be gif models, but they are still pretty kitties aren’t you yes you are!
When people get to a certain age, they realize that it’s important to pet kitties that don’t spend their entire waking life careening around the apartment knocking things over. Just part of their waking life doing that. All right, 80%. But come on, you’ve got to admit that kittens are kind of exhausting.
@NickNameNick –
Your points are all solid and your feelings completely valid. It’s too bad you cherry-pick elements from the source to prove your rage is justified.
Ironic, really.
@Betrayer:
That’s a big part of what bugs me – moreso when you aren’t even calling them a Nazi. You might just be explaining why certain kinds of talking points have been used by people, such as the Nazis, to justify discrimination against a marginalized group.
Hell, I’ve had people assume that just describing why something is racist is the same thing as calling them racist. Yet I get accused often of being the “oversensitive” one…
Like, how the fuck can you call anything what it is when people flip the fuck out over a single phrase being used regardless of the context?
@glassspiider:
Thank you.
I’ve read the article several fucking times over and if you’re going to claim I cherry-picked anything, you should at least try explaining why instead of just stating it as self-evident. I really love it when people do that, like when they claim I “didn’t get” a movie I didn’t like but don’t bother explaining what they “got” that I didn’t – apparently I’m just supposed to take their word for it.
I used those quotes specifically because they imply a lot, but – to prove I’m not “cherry-picking” (which you haven’t bothered to back up whatsoever), here’s some more quotes from the article that bugged me and explain why:
He does this right off the bat, after listing a bunch of fallacious racial realist arguments. Is he saying that having to do research is proof they might have a point? Is he saying that people who want to argue against those points need to counter-arguments memorized by heart?
He doesn’t clarify this statement, before going off on one hypothetical after another:
He keeps talking about these people, presumably parents, declaring a subject forbidden to youths (again, it’s a rather convenient way to frame an issue instead of considering the larger discussion). I’d totally believe him given his comparisons to porn but…what is any of that actually based on? Just making comparisons to porn doesn’t prove his point, because I can find plenty of evidence showing adults literally forbidding children into ever thinking about sex even now. I’d like to see actual instances of people literally claiming the subject is forbidden from discussion, than just be gullible enough to take his word for it.
Based on observing others, it seems to me no one is just declaring a discussion on race to be verboten right out of the gate – whether it is from adults to children or amongst peers – and are quite willing to explain why certain racist beliefs are factually wrong. Even in my personal experience, plenty of adults other than my parents were quite patient with me when discussing race-related concepts. Maybe I’m lucky because my parents were also a fairly open-minded sort who exposed me to things pretty early on and tried to build up my understanding from there. They rarely told me anything was forbidden except, like, maybe a movie or two they thought I wasn’t ready for. Big whoop.
The way David Wong explains it, he may as well be living in an 80’s teen movie where all the adults are buzz-kills who don’t allow them to do anything and they need to rebel.
Going back to the opening quote, he also like to set up a lot of caveats on how one side should behave while leaving the other unaccountable. Which, again, is really convenient when you pose it purely as a adults-versus-teen situation…
“Smearing the source”? Again, how? Does that mean any criticism of their source? If it is, when how is anyone suppose to prove racist beliefs are actually wrong? Are we suppose to not point out, say, Breitbart News has a history of selectively editing footage or obfuscating situations to suit their agenda? Am I not suppose to point out all the “alpha male” bullshit from PUAs is based on faulty research? That the man who conducted it even clarified that, other than it was based on wolves in captivity, wolves didn’t operate that way out in the wild at all? That those “beta male” and “zeta male” concepts have no actual basis in reality?
I love how he completely misconstrues why people took issue with the Lahren-Noah discussion or why so many people hated Yiannopoulos showing up on Real Time. Again, he keeps making it out as if people are claiming it should be forbidden – except that isn’t the case.
Both cases involve the individuals being soft-balled by way of “civility” and how there’s no actual discussion going on. Lahren didn’t care what Noah had to say and Yiannopoulos did nothing but insult the other guests while being an attention-seeking asshole. Sure, Larry Wilmore actually called him out – though many of Yiannopoulos’ fans claim he was just “triggered” than having a legitimate grievance about the guy’s behavior during discourse – but Bill Maher proceeded to act like he’s just a charming little rascal and compare him to Christopher Hitchens.
It doesn’t help that, prior from his fall from grace, supporters of Yiannopoulos would decry any single time someone did not want to give him a venue…despite already having been given many. The guy had so much exposure as is yet his sycophants think every place is obligated to indulge in his histrionic bullshit.
Again, I’m having difficulty seeing how this isn’t a disproportionate amount of responsibility being put on one side while leaving the other largely unaccountable. It never even occurs to David Wong, considering how psychology works, that many of the teens who already agree with Lahren or Yiannopoulos simply want their biases confirmed further and couldn’t give a shit about what the other side has to say. He never considers that, just maybe, a lot of these teens are just contrarians rather than having any genuine interest in hearing other perspectives.
Love those straw-man quotes too…
Yeah, I’ve totally heard people say these exact things!
…Oh, wait, no I haven’t…
The second one would be legitimate, if it wasn’t for the fact such a sentiment is often clarified further. But who gives a shit about that, right?
There’s one thing a few people seem to be missing here: David Wong has a very long, very storied history of doing this. He’s the walking definition of a “Muh white fee-fees” brogressive who thinks of himself as being so much more enlightened than those hysterical wimminz and uppity PoC, he only gives a genuine damn about “White economic anxiety” – regularly indulging in the ridiculous “Republicans don’t hate Obama and Clinton because he’s black and she’s female, they hate them because the economy” lie – and if there was ever anything in good faith about his opinion pieces (I can’t call his brain sharts “Articles” anymore), there sure as shit isn’t anymore.
Nick and I butt heads often, but he’s bang-on right about this one. Wong can take a seat on a cactus made of Legos.
@glassspiider
If you have got some enlightening info as to why NickNameNick is incorrect aside from namedropping a logical fallacy, feel free to post it.
And I feel rather sorry about that afterwards, actually. So I appreciated that.
I can get rather passionate to an intense degree. I get how off-putting that can be and don’t blame people who may not want to deal with me, because of that.
@NickNameNick
If it makes you feel better I found your long posts on your thoughts regarding David Wong’s piece to be quite fascinating and a worthwhile read. You’ve strung up a more cohesive response where alot of people might find themselves lacking the right words to express their frustrations due to their rage.
Yeah, this.
I’m 99% sure he was also the Cracked writer who wrote a post hand waving away misogyny in male nerds because it was just hard for them to not get to date the popular hot girls who dated the bad boys in high school so of course they get enraged when feminists object to male entitlement.
Never mind that there were plenty of awkward and/or nerdy women who didn’t get dates with the popular hot guys in high school. Yet we somehow managed to not form “movements” dedicated to threatening and harassing men.
Having read Cracked for years, I can attest to SFHC’s assessment of Wong…but I’m not talking about him as a person, just that I got a different conclusion from the article, which I wrote above.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, but today I saw a newly created troll account that posted a Heartiste “Trump Club” rules verbatim, without attribution, which made me laugh.
@Ooglyboogles:
Thanks. I know I get really verbose and, honestly, I sometimes go back to older posts of mine wondering why I wasn’t more succinct.
Part of it is because I hate being misunderstood, thus I’d rather be thorough about it than make a brief comment that can be misconstrued. If someone does misunderstand it, I can at least attribute it to them being unwilling to read what I wrote than because I made it badly.
I’ve noticed, on Facebook, it becomes apparent rather quickly if someone actually read what you wrote or not when you make it long enough. They won’t quote anything you say and, even when they do, they take it wholly out of context – suggesting they only skimmed it and little else before responding without much thought.
@W.W.T.H.:
It was rather shameful of me, back in my high school days, how much of an oblivious shithead I was to girls who actually showed an interest in being around me. No, I just wanted attention and validation from the girls every other guy in the schoolyard longed for because they were considered far more attractive.
Seriously, were I able to travel back in time – part it would involve me literally smacking sense into my younger self and tell him to ask that awkward, geeky girl he liked talking to on a date. Hell, it’d probably make me a far happier person than I am now as a result…
@NickNameNick
An understandable feeling. No one likes the idea of people not understanding what they are saying and what they meant.
If I ever traveled back in time, the first thing I’m gonna do is tell him to go find a new set of friends, almost all of them are nazis/elitist pricks in the making. The second thing is to walk out the door the minute your intro to accounting teacher starts making you watch The Apprentice while admiring Trump exploiting people. Just walk out instead of raging quietly in the your seat thinking about how the people around you seem to think scam artists are better people. Third is to talk to the school psychologist to figure out why everyone else seems to be able to focus on things and do things a whole lot faster than you. It’ll save old me years of grief. Fourth is to not lash out at your mom when jackasses call you c**** when you’re walking home. She didn’t do anything wrong.
I see glassspiider never responded back – I’ll just take that as meaning they didn’t have an actual argument…
Anyway, Shaun of the “Shaun and Jen” YouTube channel uploaded a video a few hours ago. David Wong’s article did try to explain the mindset, yes, but the way he conveniently frames it – along with misrepresenting the sentiments and arguments of others – is basically white privilege apologia (e.g. “b-b-but…what about their FEEEEEEEEELINGS?!”). Shaun, thankfully, never starts to make excuses on their behalf or finger-wag others for not having some kind of saint-like tolerance towards these people:
https://youtu.be/a_yfnQPaD_E