SaintEvolution wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:49 pmAll of those moviments started outside the courtroom, yeah, but with strong arguments and real action with objective targets to achieve.
It's not the same that happens in most of internet mobs in nowdays, especially with the fast speed informations have today.
But, I need to say that, I liked the picture. It looks like Youjo Senki.
Funny, I have literally the EXACT opposite view of you on this.
When the legal system fails you (as it has for COUNTLESS Americans on COUNTLESS issues besides just sexual assault: if you're unable to understand that America has a broken legal and political system that as it stands now is fundamentally set up to primarily serve one particular class of people above others, you are
woefully not paying the
slightest bit of attention and are living under a complete delusional fantasy: talk about "Red Pill vs Blue Pill") then grass roots activism is absolutely a CORNERSTONE of where REAL change in - what is ostensibly SUPPOSED to be - a Representative Democracy must come from.
Protest and civil dissent are absolute ESSENTIAL components of what America's ideals are SUPPOSED to stand for. This country was literally FOUNDED on a fucking
rebellion against an oppressive status quo (though there is of course the utterly disgusting hypocrisy of its founding also resulting in ANOTHER form of even WORSE oppression against several other groups of people, but that's a whole separate tangent).
This kind of thing is EXACTLY what so many Left-leaning people mean when they talk so much about "privilege" and whatnot: when you're life is such that you don't HAVE to deal with any of these problems that befall SO many other people - oftentimes due to their race/class/gender/sexual orientation, etc. - that is a HUGE BENEFIT of being born and growing up the way that you have been.
And it doesn't mean that people born cis/white/straight/male etc. don't have ANY problems or that their lives are rosy: I'm a cis-white-straight-male myself, and my life has had MORE than its fair share of steep peaks and valleys. All it means is you don't have ALL THIS
OTHER baggage over HERE to ALSO deal with on top of your own that OTHER people in OTHER camps often do.
So when you tell people, often people who are gay, or brown, or women, or trans, or whatever, that their problems "aren't real but imaginary" or that they're "whining", "playing the victim", or "raising too much of a fuss"... you sound like both a total fucking clueless idiot AND a callous, myopic dipshit.
I go into all of that because this is the fundamental mentality laden with bad/incorrect ingrained assumptions that a LOT of idiots on the internet (be they Redpills, MRAs, GamerGaters, or just generally clueless "I don't see what the big deal is or why such-and-such minority group is so upset" fuckmooks): the assumption that "because MY life doesn't have THESE particular problems, therefore NOBODY ELSE'S does either, and if you raise a big stink about it, all you're doing is inconveniencing the rest of us".
And hey, it doesn't even NECESSARILY have to be class/identity-dependent: while its MUCH LESS LIKELY overall, you too can be cis/white/male/straight-whatever, and STILL have some of the horrendous misfortune of some of these other problems (ones that typically mostly affected minorities generally) personally impact you in a myriad of horrible ways.
The underlying psychological issue at play here is that of poor assumptions, and the thinking that "I don't see it, it hasn't happened to me personally, it therefore must not exist or is being greatly exaggerated". And when you come into it under THAT mindset, you're apt to treat those who HAVE been affected and ARE demanding for serious change with not only skepticism, but also a lot of hemming and hawing and eye-rolling about how it might personally inconvenience both yourself and other people that you perceive to be more like you.
Its kind of the mental/dispositional equivalent of something like "Geez, all these protesters against the Vietnam war are SO annoying: they're out there day and night screaming about dead babies, and I'm just trying to enjoy my afternoon snack and favorite TV shows! What are they so upset about? Its not THEIR dead babies. None of this affects
me, I just want to read my morning paper and not be bothered!"
And its like...
tough fucking shit. This is life, this is reality, and we don't live on a fucking deserted island in the middle of a spacial vacuum: we live in a society where we're all sharing the same space as one another and EVERYTHING that we do bounces off of, impacts, and affects one another in some way: oftentimes in ways we may not even be able to
conceive of at first glance.
If that simple reality is too much for you to deal with, and if the palpable pain, suffering, and real problems of MILLIONS of others is such a bothersome irritant to you, then don't go outside and don't go on the fucking internet at all. Or better yet, grow the hell up, and fucking deal with reality and the fundamental truth that its all
not just fucking about you like a reasonable adult.
Widespread sexual assault (or "rape culture" for a more loaded way of putting the more pervasive, underlying societal issues with it) is VERY MUCH one of those kinds of issues: one that is VERY pervasive and HAS deeply impacted COUNTLESS MILLIONS of people (much more often women, but plenty of men too). And as with many other social ills, there is a GREAT deal of "It hasn't happened to me or anyone that I know of, therefore I don't believe its THAT bad".
And yes, before someone else chimes in with this, I am indeed very much allowing for the fact that there are at least a couple of people in this thread who claim they themselves were sexual assault victims, and yet STILL are dismissive and suspect of the broader issues with sexual assault and the claims of others and THEIR experiences with it: that's ultimately on them, and its still unfortunately very much possible (though overall certainly a great deal less probable generally) to have a problem directly impact you personally and yet STILL be stubbornly resistant to seeing past how
you personally have dealt with it and be able to look more into the wider social issues underlying it beyond your own specific personal experiences with it and how you've coped with it or how YOU define it.
Because of all these bad/incorrect assumptions about the severity (or in some cases even the EXISTENCE) of these issues, there's a lot of that mentality of "I just want to enjoy my tea and crumpets* in peace, why can't everyone shut up about their problems and just go away and be quiet about it! I don't want to be bothered!" going around in various circles.
*(Or for most internet nerds in the 2000s and 2010s, "my Pokemon, kids' cartoons, and superhero shit")
And while there is indeed a fair amount of that "Just sit down and shut up!" rhetoric coming from female, brown-skinned, and even gay or trans, and other such individuals of that nature... its not for nothing and not at all a coincidence that overall, broadly speaking in the grander scheme of things, those examples are typically the outliers and the VAST overwhelmingly majority of the people behind this mentality is usually and more often than not an OCEAN of white/straight/male/middle or upper class suburban faces.
Because out of all the vast majority of different groups out there, pound for pound, THAT'S the subset that's the LEAST likely (in terms of overall averages, percentages, and probability) to have many of these specific kinds of issues directly affect them. And thus it is the EASIEST and most comforting thing in the world to retreat mentally/emotionally into a "see no evil/hear no evil, head-in-the-sand" mentality, rather than actually have to maybe accept that there's something
genuinely, fundamentally fucking wrong with how society is working (or
not working rather) for a LOT of people out there.
And also not for nothing: but a LOT of the "Yeah, but on the
flipside..." arguments about this shit are oftentimes COMPLETE AND UTTER HORSESHIT on their face. For example, since this whole issue here is about sexual assault and things pertaining to #MeToo: this idea that "This is all devolving into a mob mentality, and innocent men who didn't actually do anything are suffering and paying the consequences."
While I'm sure that there are a few assorted individual cases of that actually happening here or there, and without a doubt those are INCREDIBLY fucked up and horrible incidents for sure: broadly speaking overall, that's NOT actually happening very much. While there have been false #MeToo allegations for sure... they've generally been VERY quick to turn out to NOT be accurate, and the accused quickly exonerated in the public eye. Don't forget, Stan Lee was #MeToo-ed at one point: and once it was apparent that it was a bullshit play for money, pretty much EVERYONE promptly fucking forgot about it, and since his death the guy's been venerated and paid respect to to no end. Aziz Ansari, another victim of a fake #MeToo accusation, is also not hurting for work last I checked.
Even Brett Kavanaugh (who I personally think is overwhelmingly likely to be guilty as all hell, but that's neither here nor there) is STILL sitting on the Supreme Court Bench, DESPITE having an UNBELIEVABLY credible (and in all probability, real) #MeToo accusation made against him. In many cases, even certain men who actually HAVE credible accounts thrown at them STILL manage to get away with it anyhow and prosper in their careers (which is kind of the whole point of what #MeToo is trying to fight back against).
Again, broadly and statistically speaking, the FEARS and WORRIES about a rash of fake #MeToo allegations ruining innocent men's reputations is generally FAR, FAR GREATER than any ACTUAL rash of fake accusations actually happening in reality.
If this were actually a REAL "mob mentality" in the true sense of the term... never-mind the fake accusations, where are the rashes of VIOLENCE and outright harassment against many of these accused men? Why aren't Kevin Spacey or James Franco or Louis C.K. or Bryan Singer or
countless other accused individuals getting assaulted in the streets by angry mobs of women & feminists, or having their homes egged and bricks thrown through their windows, or words like "rapist" and "scum" spray painted onto their cars everywhere they go?
In the cases where criminal charges aren't or can't be brought up (like with Weinstein and Cosby), by and large the consequences that MANY of these celebrities (the VAST majority of whom overall, and I'm sure with some exceptions, are VERY often credibly and likely guilty) ultimately end up paying is that they're just LESS of a celebrity than they were previously. Oh horror: Louis C.K. can't make that sequel to I Love You, Daddy that everyone was chomping at the bit for.
Note instead where most of the ACTUAL rashes of violence and mindless "hate-mob mentality" is generally actually coming from in reality.
There's a GREAT deal of other interesting psychological phenomenon that can be delved into regarding topics like this, like a predisposition and compulsion to defend and protect power and figures representing power (even when its power that the person defending it doesn't actually possess themselves): but that's a whole side-tangent of its own. Instead, I'll just post an absolute all-time great and flawlessly apt quote on the matter from Matt Taibbi:
Matt Taibbi wrote:But actual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields.
You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that’s what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish.
But I think more to the point here: many of these celebrity/entertainment industry figures (even Z-grade nothing ones like Mignogna) being so ravenously defended against all rationality, apart from the usual fandom personality cult shit, I think is also tied deeply on some level into the broader mentality of "None of this is affecting ME and MY personal comfort, so I don't want to be bothered with it: I just want to enjoy my popcorn and junk food TV and movies in peace and just want the angry rabble outside to quiet down."
Because in this case, its impacting these people's entertainment: "I don't give a fuck if this person who's movies/TV performances I enjoy might've hurt someone I don't know and never will know (or worse, someone I don't personally like), I just want to keep enjoying their work: I don't want any of this other stuff to impact or inconvenience ME and what I like."
The fundamental point of all this being: its the EASIEST thing in the world to tell someone else who's hurting "Your problems aren't that bad or are all in your head, now settle down please, the racket you're raising is disrupting my favorite cartoons." when YOUR ass is nice and comfy with the way things are.
And its also just as easy to look at problems that are (in your perspective at least) safely and comfortably in the past behind us. "Sure, someone like Rosa Parks was justified and warranted to protest because things were MUCH worse back then: but because things are in many ways BETTER NOW, that therefore means that EVERYTHING us hunky dory, and anyone that raises any fuss NOW is just an irritant and a whiner who is just bothering me."
This of course in NO WAY accounts for how many other comfortable, complacent white people back in the 1960s felt EXACTLY the same way about someone like Rosa Parks.
"What's she crying over a bus seat for? We freed the slaves already! What more do these people want? Now they're just such a pestering bother, constantly whining for MORE shit, like 'basic civil rights'. "
Flash forward to today now:
"Oh my god, I can't stand all this Black Lives Matter shit! What are black people so upset about? We freed the slaves! We gave them civil rights! Now what, they want police to stop unjustly harassing and murdering them when they're unarmed and oftentimes completely innocent? Jesus, is it EVER enough with these people?"
Same with women:
"Oh my god, we gave them the right to vote! We stopped treating them as a husband's property! We gave them the right to work! We made marital rape illegal (in the early fucking 90s)! We let them serve in the military! We even let them have their own credit cards (in the fucking 1970s)! Now they're crying because so many men in positions of power and authority in the workplace cleanly get away with sexually harassing & assaulting them and holding their jobs hostage for sexual favors? And they're maybe sick and tired of seeing their boobs and butt on prominent display throughout so much media like CONSTANTLY all the fucking time? But I like boobs and butts! WHAT MORE DO THESE PEOPLE WANT!?"
The degree to which so many people today are just SO beyond historically illiterate and bereft of critical thinking and self-analysis that they're FUNDAMENTALLY
incapable of seeing their own BLATANT hypocrisy in these kinds of situations and how they're in many ways NO DIFFERENT than the same comfortable people in previous eras of social upheaval... its nothing short of remarkable and borderline artistic.
So no, I have the COMPLETE AND FUNDAMENTALLY OPPOSITE reading of Julie's rebuttal to your (SaintEvolution's) preposterously dense and idiotic inability to recognize - some fairly fucking obvious - historical parallels.
That, and I think that Julie's image anime/Moe image is horribly ugly, gaudy, and gross aesthetically (as are, frankly, most of her images in that style).
So yeah: total and COMPLETE opposite take: she's spot on in (most of, I disagree with her on a few specific points) the actual important substance, while her visual/aesthetic taste is more what I'd call into question.
