01 April 2019

Everyone Gets to Be Offended (even if we're only offended that people take offense at the things that strike us as innocuous)

"I'm [angry, outraged, offended] so you have to take my idea seriously."
"No. Your idea needs to be serious to be taken seriously."

Right now, there are folks getting upset because Joe Biden is too physical. I find this Biden (and before it the Al Franken) thing so frustrating. if you can't tell the difference between rape, molestation, sexual harassment, misogyny, a fumbling sexual advance, a dumb joke, and someone who is demonstrative ... or worse, if you can tell the difference but think they should all be treated the same, you should just leave society. Seriously. Because this world is not pure enough for you and never will be. 

That said, I suspect this is one of those instances in which we're the victim of algorithms. The algorithms that maximize attention and response drive these sort of stupid issues up to the top of the list because they do offend everyone: from the purists who think that Joe being demonstrative is offensive to the rest of us who think that taking offense at that is offensive. Everyone is offended and the "how do I maximize hits?" algorithm wins. Even blog authors write a post about it.

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