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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29781 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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Uh...

You've gotten reported twice in the ten minutes this post has been up. I immediately recognized you from your mountain of AAQCs back in the old country, but this is apparently just your third post here on the new site, and it reads like artificially-breathless marketing copy, to the point that I immediately checked to see if this was copypasta. At minimum, even though you never outright say "vote for Vivek!" this seems like a pretty clear example of recruiting for a cause.

You're free to make your case for Vivek, of course, but phrases like "multi-disciplinary genius," "dazzlingly bright young maverick," and "young and daring patriot" are, in their own brightly-smiling way, egregiously obnoxious--it's pure, unapologetic rhetoric of the kind people use to subtly build consensus and conformity. I did hesitate to even say anything; given how often I'm forced to moderate a black-pilled flame-out, someone making a positive case is automatically a breath of fresh air. But this doesn't read like @Sizzle50 making a good argument, this reads like @Sizzle50 writing ad copy.

Seriously, are you all believing this post on face value, or am I crazy?

As an Irish person, this reads like a textbook example of slagging though less affectionate, you can slag someone off for being a feckin' eejit. But everyone is reacting as if it's VOTE FOR VIVEK VIVEK OUR SAVIOUR BESTEST GUY EVER. Meanwhile I'm going "Oh, that's harsh, even if he deserves to be mocked". EDIT: It's the very excess of the praise for mundane accomplishments (e.g. playing the piano), if they're even accomplishments, that denotes it as slagging. Piling Pelion on Ossa for the wonderfulness of the marvellousness of the amazingness.

Talk about cultural disconnect!

A case this week highlighted that we haven't quite found the line where insult as compliment becomes insult as insult. A pipe-fitter from the UK was awarded €20,000 because his Irish colleagues abused him. They read out negative football results about the English team in the World Cup, sang rebel songs and whenever a dangerous job came up said 'send the Brit in'.

The man took it all as personal assault. The people doing it probably believed their actions to be nationally acceptable: we take pride in beating the English. Ray Houghton is still a national hero because of his goal against England in Euro '88. Christy Moore even wrote a song calling Houghton's goal 'revenge for Skibbereen'. Sure it's only a bit of craic. We don't really mean any harm.

Because insulting each other is so much a part of what we do, we find it odd that someone could object. But lots of people find offensive what we find normal; a colleague of mine was recently at a two-day meeting in New York. Early on, he realised that one of the Americans in attendance was an obnoxious, distant, dislikeable pain in the arse. But, because he had to get the best out of him, he spent the first coffee break trying to establish what was wrong.

Turned out to be simple. One word: 'Jaysus'. Every time my colleague said it, the American flinched because he regarded it as blasphemy. In a situation like that there's no point trying to explain that 'Jaysus' is used by the Irish in a way that has shag all to do with the man upstairs. No point explaining that even Irish priests use 'Jaysus' willy-nilly. No amount of argument would change the American's mind about what he saw to be blasphemy.

The bolded part is what gets me into trouble here all the time 😁

EDIT EDIT: I love ye all, lads, but there's no denying ye can be dry shites at times.

The man took it all as personal assault. The people doing it probably believed their actions to be nationally acceptable: we take pride in beating the English. Ray Houghton is still a national hero because of his goal against England in Euro '88. Christy Moore even wrote a song calling Houghton's goal 'revenge for Skibbereen'. Sure it's only a bit of craic. We don't really mean any harm.

Context matters too. I work with a bunch of different nationalities and the Franco-Brit ribbing took on a distinctly different tone to me as the ratio became more and more unbalanced.

It would still be speaking unclearly.

Seriously, are you all believing this post on face value, or am I crazy?

I don't think you're crazy, and I definitely thought about addressing that angle in the mod message, but I didn't immediately see a good way to do that without wandering into my own substantive thoughts on the matter.

The thing about writing this sort of post as satire is that Poe's Law looms large. "You didn't get the joke" is a response that transforms the initial problem into a clearer one--a violation of the "speak plainly" rule.

"Dry shites" is the name of my Ska band.

I felt the same way reading it, I wasn't sure if it was parody.

Don't forget "paradigm shift".

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