Loren Feldman is hilarious but cruel at the same time
whydoeseverythingsuck.com
whydoeseverythingsuck.com
The guy acted like an ignorant douche, putting on a cliched minstrel show. I think you're giving him too much credit calling him hilarious or even cruel . . . try pathetic.
Also, I don’t think it’s wrong to joke about race. By joking about racial stereotypes, people are more comfortable discussing and confronting the uneasiness they feel when interacting with people from other races, nationalities, and cultural backgrounds. Plus, race jokes are probably more funny because they are so taboo, see Chris Rock, Dave Chappel, et al.
This dude has an execution and taste problem, that’s the story.
And it's not easy to take a stand against it around here - more often than not, criticizing this sort of thing gets you a lot of anonymous downmods. I'm willing to say something about it, put my real name behind it, and take the downmods. That's fine.
As I said before, I'd much rather these things don't get posted at all on a site I go to for Hacker News, but if they're going to be posted, I'm going to make a comment about it. Staying quiet on it is the same as saying that it's acceptable to you. If others want to do that, fine, but there's no way I'm going to do that. Sorry.
Interestingly, I mostly agree with you. If you read what I said carefully, I didn't call the guy a racist and I specifically said the headline calling him "cruel" was too much. That'd imply that he went out of his way to try to hurt people with what he said. Hell, I mostly like the guy and have posted some of his stuff on News.YC myself.
I think that if you reread my comment, you'll see that even Loren Feldman himself would probably agree with what I said. What he did was a cliched minstrel show. He tried to be funny, but instead he ended up being hurtful and looking like a racist douchebag. He's essentially said as much himself in subsequent postings.
The bigger question is why the black guy is being attacked for commenting on the original video. ;)
We're all #828282 here (oh, except nickb on his 10k day) . You were probably downvoted because your post looked like it was copy/pasted from Digg.
You seem pretty interested in arguing with someone about this guy. I think it's pretty obvious to most people that this guy just isn't worthy of discussion. He's clearly an asshole, what's there to talk about? (that's a rhetorical question).
I post technical articles here and contribute tips to other hackers every day; I really don't need you to lecture me about the quality of my posts.
I do notice a definite pattern with respect to this sort of thing on race related issues -- some people are quick to downmod, but slow to put themselves out there and have a real debate on the issue. It gets annoying and I'm commenting on it. If people want to downmod for that, you're right, it's their prerogative, but to me it's more likely that they don't want to publicly touch a radioactive issue than that they simply don't have time to comment.
As far as insulting other users . . . who could be insulted? They're anonymous so there's no damage to their reputation. If they took personal umbrage, well, what can I say? They can feel free to say something about it, just like you did.
Anyway, I'd much rather not deal with race related stuff on this site period, but if people are gonna post it, I'm probably going to comment on it. I posted a related story and then deleted it because I'd rather not see a rash of threads on this.
I'd like to make a motion to move this post to [dead].
The link goes to a blog post where a software hacker -- the creator of a early piece of Mac software I really liked, DayMaker -- comments on Feldman's work and Feldman's inclusion in a tech industry panel. By mere virtue of having open comments, that was an invitation for other discussion. And, as the issue relates to tech bloggers and the online video market -- popular topics here -- it arguably fits at HN.
But the submission headline injects a strong opinion -- that the Feldman work is 'hilarious' and 'cruel'. (Even 'cruel' can imply some level of affirmation; nonsensical insults like "your mama wears combat boots" aren't 'cruel'.) That initial spin has polluted the later discussion.
At the risk of offending another group, I will also point out the original submitter does not reside in North America. He may not be familiar with North American sensitivity taboos, and may mainly know about American race relations and ethnic groups through the distorted lens of exported entertainment mass media.