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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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A 30-year-old pregnant nurse attempted to steal a GPS-tracked rental bike from a young black man right outside her workplace, and when a group of onlookers surrounded her and started filming she had the audacity to start acting strangely, call for help, and briefly cry. Don't worry, justice has been served: she has been identified and suspended, and she will never be okay again.

  • -29

I'm posting another comment because this is my favorite story in a long time. It just exposes so many things that are insane with American culture:

  • Why is she getting fired for this? Is there any evidence she did anything wrong, inappropriate, immoral or illegal?

  • Why isn't the behavior of the black man considered sexual harassment? He's deep in her personal space.

  • Why is a sixth month pregnant woman traveling on NYC streets on a rented bicycle? It's 2023 and we can't get reasonable transportation for pregnant women? We're on the verge of having home robots (and a massive unemployment crisis) and we can't even keep a pregnant woman at home where she is most safe?

  • Why on earth are people, in this thread, complaining about white women's tears? I'm a 100% hetero man and I'd break down crying if this happened to me. She was accosted by multiple huge men who were scamming her and humiliating her on the internet. Seriously, if you aren't on her side, I think you lack empathy or something.

Imagine showing this to someone in 1900. We have instant global film-making and we use it to ruin the lives of pregnant nurses, briefly following a massive global pandemic where nurses were on the front lines. And the powers that be decided to side with the teenagers and ruin this nurse's life! (And that's without the racial angle, obviously.) I'm going to be laughing about this story all day. It's just so absurd. I can't imagine anything more ridiculous, but the simulation is manifold I guess.

Because this woman is almost certainly part of the problem. Yes, yes, we don’t know, but do you really think she’s voting Republican? You think she has a Blue Lives Matter flag in her living room? I’d eat every hat I own if she did.

I really dislike this argument that's becoming increasingly frequent here and elsewhere, that is basically "Even if what happened to this person is unjust and morally wrong, they probably voted for Biden so fuck them." (Obviously the same argument is made everywhere else on the Internet about Trump voters.)

Yes, I get it, war to the knife and it's fun to munch popcorn while watching leopards eat faces, and @FCfromSSC will say this is just the sound of inevitability.

I know expecting people to show empathy for a (presumed) member of the enemy tribe is too much, but ffs we don't even actually know if she is in fact a woke liberal BLM-supporting enemy tribeswoman, we're just doing some sort of pseudo-Bayesian reasoning where she probably is so fuck her.

It's exactly the behavior in the Crump tweet linked above. Ditch the particulars, go straight to the tribal pattern. This shit will be the death of us.

I wasn't terribly impressed by her behavior in the brief section of the video I watched. I think it's certainly possible that the kid and their friends were actually trying to scam her. Maybe she's a progressive and this is just desserts. Whatever.

The rage mob is a vastly larger problem than any of that. The rage mob is a vastly clearer problem than any of that. These people are making a living off generating large-scale hatred, and no one has the slightest idea of how to make them stop. I am convinced that the hate they generate has serious, long-lasting consequences in the real world, and the harm they inflict is reliably rewarded, and on a vast scale. This is a career now, with significant growth potential.

...And people tell me we're peaked, and it's gonna get better from here. Yeah, sure.

I wasn't terribly impressed by her behavior in the brief section of the video I watched.

I don't understand this attitude at all. Can't you just let a woman in an awful situation respond in the totally reasonable way which is to cry and try to get help? How do you want women to behave in these situations?

Can't you just let a woman in an awful situation respond in the totally reasonable way

No because it's not reasonable and you as a human (regardless of whether you are a man or a woman) are supposed to be better than this. The Gom Jabbar only kills animals.

In reality the Gom Jabbar would kill everyone; there is no one who cannot be tested to destruction.

I watched maybe fifteen seconds of the video, and the bit I saw wasn't her crying, but trying rather ineffectually to issue orders. I have no actual opinion on her behavior, other than a firm confidence that she did nothing wrong. At the absolute worst, she got in a silly argument over a misunderstanding, and that is absolutely not the sort of thing that people should be judged on. There's no need to valorize her. This incident does not appear to say anything useful about the nature of society. People are going to get into silly arguments, and we should be able to handle that fact without resorting to tribal warfare.

I think it says a lot about society that random people are victims of this kind of thing on a regular basis. She lost her job and had to delete her socials. Her husband had to delete his socials too. There is still an active mob of people who are seemingly trying to kill her over a bicycle rental. She won't get her job back. The hospital is not going to face any consequences. Nor are the young men, or the hate mob on Twitter. I think that says a lot about American society.

Having watched a number of these, I think it's entirely possible that she will get her job back, and that within a month this will mostly be behind her. I've seen no evidence anyone is actually trying to kill her. The hospital definately will not face consequences, as they've done nothing really wrong. It's not entirely clear that the young men did anything wrong either.

The hate mob is absolutely the problem, and its existence says woeful things about our society's future. Still, it could be at least a little worse.

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