The Fourteenth

[anticirclejerk]

RP HATE MEME
Go nuts. Namedrop, rant, rave, and wank up a storm.

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I am going to delete all the dumb, aspergers worthy discussion threads.

this is not the place for talking about butts and farts and shrimp. take that to your plurk or rpanons.

ps you guys should link me new gifs or all you're going to get from now on is jensen ackles

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Because it's completely missing the point in at least three different ways.
The first two show why it is derailing to ask the argument and expect an answer honestly, the third why the argument is derailing in general because it's pointless in the first place.

1)You cannot prove that something is wide-spread without serious usage of funds and a scientific study. No reasonable person expects this of someone on a blog/LJ. If you do, you are therefore pretty obviously derailing. It's the same as demanding 100% proof that it's raining where another person is, because you doubt it, since it's not raining where you are.

2)It's not possible to completely prove, especially in a internet setting, because of the nature of anonymity. Take the F/F bashing as an example. Lots of people immediately claim it's all trolling, so they can continue it. This leads to a)the shit continuing, and b)no action being done because it's "just trolls". It is completely impossible to prove that the people, despite their large numbers, aren't actually trolls, and no force in this world short of a major secret service could prove otherwise. This would require breaking the constitution.
This, too, is why it's derailing. You cannot exactly expect a random commentor on the internet to provide secret-service level information.

3)It's completely missing the point in the first place because it does not matter if it is wide spread.

If I post shock images of mutilated women to you in ways that you end up seeing, to scare you out of a game, this is a problem even if I do this only to you, only in one game. It's clearly not a wide-spread problem, because I only do it to you here, but it's still incredibly shitty behavior.

To go back to the F/F example, it doesn't matter if not every F/F roleplayer is getting shock image spam. That some do, and that someone went out of their way to try to shut a game down with this, is already a problem even if it isn't wide spread.

That's why the argument is derailing. It's asking something that the other player cannot give you, and is pointless in the first place because it doesn't matter. You are thus focusing on "wide spread", to avoid addressing the actual issue. That's really what derailment refers to.



You wouldn't even be asking this if the topic wasn't prejudice. If the topic was "you saw someone you know keying your car", your first thought wouldn't be "but is my problem wide-spread and therefore, am I allowed to voice a complaint". No, you'd see damage on your car, and you'd ask the responsible authorities to do something about it.

You'd not really be pleased if the authorities would then shut everything down and ask you to prove if your experience is wide-spread, no?

All derailment means is that you try to focus on things that aren't actually the issue. And the question is: Why are you doing that?

[(Anonymous)]

At the same time, the experience not being widespread also determines the course of action to take. To take your example, if someone keys your car, the logical first action to take is to report it to the police. Then you get your car's paint fixed. Not to speak out against the use of keys in general because your car was keyed or to try and get laws made to prevent the use of keys.

Now if people getting their cars keyed in a certain area was indeed widespread, then other action could be taken. Things like adding more lighting, adding security cameras, or increasing patrols in the area.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess what I was thinking of is more like someone saying "As a ____ we're so oppressed because someone keyed my car" Yeah, that's a shitty thing to do to anyone. But I wouldn't call a group oppressed because one person keyed someone's car.

da

[(Anonymous)]

Well no, that would be backwards. A more realistic application there would be "my car was keyed because I'm a member of x group," in other words being a member of an oppressed group has made them a target for something bad.

The fact that other people in the oppressed group have been targeted in other ways doesn't mean that the car keying is irrelevant just because it's not the thing that happens most often.

(And of course just the fact that it happened to a member of an oppressed group doesn't prove that was the cause why it happened either, so anyone with any sense will look at the context of the situation before simply claiming causality.)