Author Topic: Humanity: Good News, Bad News  (Read 110679 times)

tushantin

  • CC:DBT Dream Team
  • Hero of Time (+5000)
  • *
  • Posts: 5645
  • Under Your Moonlight, Stealing Your Stars
    • View Profile
    • My Website
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1215 on: May 14, 2013, 04:27:44 am »
http://rt.com/news/belize-mayan-pyramid-destroyed-234/

What the f**k?!

"Oh, look! Here's the glorious meadow, surrounded by rivers and forests, sculpted carefully by nature in the process of a million years, and has been a home to countless creatures of countless bio-diversities. .....Let's destroy it to make a shampoo factory!"
« Last Edit: May 14, 2013, 04:29:34 am by tushantin »

tushantin

  • CC:DBT Dream Team
  • Hero of Time (+5000)
  • *
  • Posts: 5645
  • Under Your Moonlight, Stealing Your Stars
    • View Profile
    • My Website
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1216 on: June 17, 2013, 02:16:32 pm »
http://www.aidancares.com/

This kid... I love this kid.

Sajainta

  • Survivor of the Darkness
  • Radical Dreamer (+2000)
  • *
  • Posts: 2004
  • Reporting live from Purgatory.
    • View Profile
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1217 on: June 22, 2013, 09:53:16 am »
I am very pleased that Kickstarter apologized for not removing that godawful "seduction guide" (read: thinly-veiled "how to get away with sexual assault" how-to book) after being alerted of how disgusting it was.  I'm even more happy that they donated money to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network), stating it's "an excellent organization that combats exactly the sort of problems our inaction may have encouraged."  Major kudos, Kickstarter.

tushantin

  • CC:DBT Dream Team
  • Hero of Time (+5000)
  • *
  • Posts: 5645
  • Under Your Moonlight, Stealing Your Stars
    • View Profile
    • My Website
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1218 on: June 22, 2013, 10:25:25 am »
I am very pleased that Kickstarter apologized for not removing that godawful "seduction guide" (read: thinly-veiled "how to get away with sexual assault" how-to book) after being alerted of how disgusting it was.  I'm even more happy that they donated money to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network), stating it's "an excellent organization that combats exactly the sort of problems our inaction may have encouraged."  Major kudos, Kickstarter.
I wish I could "Like" this post.

Even more curiously, that guide is hardly as disturbing as the context of what necessitates it. Because this is hardly new; a bit of google search will reveal a thousand such products promising lessons on "seduction". (Note: Half of those are simply "monetizing" on people's insecurities, just like that Axe perfume in the market)

Why a guide for seduction, in fact? What market would it sell well at? Precisely those who lack personal integrity, who have fallen into the cynical spiral of thinking that psychological manipulation or physical force is the only way to form relationship / have intercourse. Why? Because (and they hate to admit this) they're not interesting enough to form honest relationships -- and even if they are, things just don't work out well due to their own insecurities. Such festering desperation, nurtured by he dominant patriarchal culture, can manifest into something even more violent than it already is. This is the market that brands sexual abuse as something cool, Hollywood style.

 :picardno

Again, this is just a situation. To find the causes, we'd need to drill a bit more towards the core...

Anywho, I'm glad Kickstarter was able to remove the guide and donate to RAINN. I really wonder if we'd have some sort of a global pop-culture that focuses on treating a woman* as a person, rather than an animal to "conquer". That's where Art can play a big role in.

Any thoughts, mates?



*...and employees. Sorry for going off a tangent here, but I believe that employees are being treated as nothing more than sheep currently. What with the crushing of will, creativity, and passion...

Berf

  • Iokan (+1)
  • *
  • Posts: 12
    • View Profile
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1219 on: June 22, 2013, 06:44:16 pm »
I partially disagree with Kickstarter. Now, don't get me wrong, these seduction guides are at best pathetic, at worst extremely in bad taste. And, of course, Kickstarter is a private company, so they have the right to cherry-pick what they want to work with; I don't hold anything against them for removing it.

Still, I think part of freedom of speech is being able to express any opinion, including those that might be offensive or even against the very idea of freedom. As a society, we shouldn't be trying to regulate what is or isn't published as that is too slippery a slope. I understand some people fear these sort of guides might negatively affect the men that read them but, honestly, anyone who is manipulated that much by the shit he reads simply has no moral fiber to be a decent human being, and it isn't by stopping the publication of shit that this will change.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2013, 06:46:16 pm by Berf »

alfadorredux

  • Entity
  • Mystical Knight (+700)
  • *
  • Posts: 746
  • Just a purple cat
    • View Profile
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1220 on: June 22, 2013, 07:21:29 pm »
There is a difference between not suppressing speech and assisting it. I don't think anyone is actually suggesting that these people be jailed for spewing their filth. That would be suppressing their speech (and it would drive the filth further underground and make it more difficult to eradicate). Kicking them out of a private fundraising venue isn't suppression, period.

(Note that I am speaking here as a citizen of a country that does have hate speech laws. I've never noticed that they did much except open various cans of worms.)
« Last Edit: June 22, 2013, 08:01:56 pm by alfadorredux »

Berf

  • Iokan (+1)
  • *
  • Posts: 12
    • View Profile
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1221 on: June 23, 2013, 05:56:46 am »
But I didn't say suppress; I said regulate. Determining that a book doesn't have the right to have a fundraising campaign isn't suppression — after all, you're not downright forbidding it — but it's still a form of regulation. Like I said, Kickstarter is a private company, so they can regulate their content in whatever way the wish, but I am uncomfortable with the way Kickstarter was pressed into doing this by those campaigns, petitions, etc.

tushantin

  • CC:DBT Dream Team
  • Hero of Time (+5000)
  • *
  • Posts: 5645
  • Under Your Moonlight, Stealing Your Stars
    • View Profile
    • My Website
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1222 on: June 23, 2013, 11:11:46 am »
Out of topic, but Berf, even I somehow read "suppress" in your statements despite the fact you didn't actually say it. Why is that so, I can't seem to detect from your speech, due to the short moments I have to read and respond. But that tells you a lot of human cognition, aye? We tend to see and hear things we think we're quite sure of, no matter how rational we are, and it isn't always the case. We always think we have the perfect understanding of the world around us... only to realize at a later point in time that almost everything was a lie (paradigm shifts), just because what our eyes see and what our brains interpret is often... different. It's pretty fascinating!

Anywho, back to the topic.

Regarding Kickstarter's regulation, there's actually a lot of things in motion here that we can barely comprehend. For one thing, Kickstarter is providing a service, providing a form of agency to people and hence earning their own fair share. And since they're providing it, it doesn't become a user's national / international right to take those services for granted. Kickstarter has no obligation to support free speech when it comes to selecting which voice deserves more attention, and which doesn't. (Think CGArtists: no matter how good of an artist you are, you can't upload your work to their gallery if they think it's not up to the professional quality they need it to be. We only use those systems because, for one, we don't have a better system which is also cost-effective, and two, it retains power to the administrators of the services.)

Another important element, out of countless others, I see in play here is the value between free-speech and cultural infection. Language can be a blessing and curse, depending how it's used. Because languages and phrases can literally control minds and perception. In English, we have words for "He / She" denoting to male and female organisms, while "It" for animals with unknown gender, or even objects. In Hindi, an equivalent of "It" does not even exist; you simply project a male / female variant to objects, and imagine the objects having sexual connotations -- a tree is female, but the mango is male.

Now how does that affect sexual abuse? Simple: by morphing perceptions to language. See, language or even the current pop-culture is widely acknowledged to be one of the primary enforcers of sexual abuse. You may have heard of the terms: "Get back in the Kitchen", "Damsel in Distress", "She wants the D", etc. I could name countless. On the surface, they seem pretty innocent enough. But they're often taken out of context, for the sake of hilarity, and influence younger generations into thinking, "This is how it works. Women are lesser than men. Men dominate women. I am entitled to MY woman. She better listen to ME." <----- And that, you'd agree, is outright horrible. In fact, current media have actually not only exploited this for the sake of commerce, but also helped enforce this further. Even if language doesn't directly affect some people at the opposite end, it will still subliminally morph their perceptions sufficiently enough to make them tolerant to such a thing, and thereby encouraging them to allow it.

Hence, a bit of regulation is necessary to at least purge away the past filth that promotes violence against women. Remember that even saying out aloud, "Get back in the Kitchen" is dehumanizing enough; and that guy was actually writing a whole book with worse materials in it.

But even then, let's forget I wrote all, and get to the core of your argument: You believe that freedom of speech shouldn't be regulated. That the man who wrote the "seduction guide" should be free to publish it if he feels. Heck, something like Salman Rushdie: He shouldn't be banned from India just because of his Satanic Verses.

But the point here is not about publication, or even self-publication (which have a fair-share of speech-freedoms; guy publishes a book, readers can rate to their heart's content). The point here is endorsement. The point is financial support, crowd-funded. The point is actually paying someone to inspire a whole new generations of criminals, or even a whole new rape-culture, by the money of the people AGAINST those very people, that may essentially become self-destructive to our civilization. The point is actually providing service, some sort of agency, for someone who believes it's totally okay to endorse violence against women.

And how many endorse services and agency to help protect women from such a thing and even educate the masses about it? Well,... that could be for you to think about.

tushantin

  • CC:DBT Dream Team
  • Hero of Time (+5000)
  • *
  • Posts: 5645
  • Under Your Moonlight, Stealing Your Stars
    • View Profile
    • My Website

tushantin

  • CC:DBT Dream Team
  • Hero of Time (+5000)
  • *
  • Posts: 5645
  • Under Your Moonlight, Stealing Your Stars
    • View Profile
    • My Website

tushantin

  • CC:DBT Dream Team
  • Hero of Time (+5000)
  • *
  • Posts: 5645
  • Under Your Moonlight, Stealing Your Stars
    • View Profile
    • My Website
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1225 on: November 26, 2013, 03:07:24 pm »
I'm pretty sure we were all aware of this, but...
[youtube]BmVJaBuoEYA[/youtube]

tushantin

  • CC:DBT Dream Team
  • Hero of Time (+5000)
  • *
  • Posts: 5645
  • Under Your Moonlight, Stealing Your Stars
    • View Profile
    • My Website
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1226 on: March 01, 2014, 06:34:41 pm »
ZeaLitY and FaustWolf are gonna love this. This is what I've been up to.  8)
(Although, I've contributed nothing of importance... yet.)
[youtube]DZGEbngfv-4[/youtube]

Synchronization

  • Porrean (+50)
  • *
  • Posts: 66
    • View Profile
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1227 on: March 04, 2014, 07:31:45 pm »
1

chi_z

  • Squaretable Knight (+400)
  • *
  • Posts: 483
  • And you thought the dalton idea was ludicrous!
    • View Profile
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1228 on: November 05, 2014, 10:55:34 am »
Republican sweep.
 :picardno

brb, starting own country
brb, getting bombed

not that I like Dems either, but I would rather they be in power if I had the choice   :x

Lennis

  • Chronopolitan (+300)
  • *
  • Posts: 385
    • View Profile
Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« Reply #1229 on: November 30, 2014, 09:44:28 pm »
These things happen in cycles.  It's a reflection of the two-party system really not knowing how to fix the problems of the country, so the party holding the White House historically gets burned in midterms.  Then the opposing party wins the following presidential election only to find their own congressional majority crushed a few years later, and the cycle repeats.  It happened to Clinton, then to Bush 43, and now to Obama.  One wonders how many more times the American people will put up with this nonsense before they get smart and run both parties out of Washington.