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Comment by naraniano | Hacker News Reader

My two cents: I liked those two subreddits. They were fun, and I'm pretty sure only a very small subset of the regular users did ACTUALLY hate black people or fat people (I'm fat myself!). But evidently if those subs get banned, there's no point on spewing hate against black or fat people in other subs because 1) most of us weren't actually racist/...antifatist? and were just trying to have fun, making jokes around some common subject and 2) nobody cares about your political views if you're not in a political sub, so you keep it there.

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“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I read comments like yours - "I'm not really a bad person, it was just a prank, Bro!" from time to time and I think it betrays a real lack of understanding on how human interaction works.

It is one thing to make a joke about fat people in some private setting among friends who know you and will take your words ironically. But to make the same joke in a public sub that was explicitly set up to ridicule fat people conveys a very different meaning. It means that you condone the sentiment behind the sub and agree with those users (perhaps a minority perhaps everyone else on there except you, who knows?) that do harbor malice towards others. By joining in you give such people strength and encouragement.

Reddit was right to ban those subs. You were wrong to participate.

(This doesn't make you a bad person in general, we all make mistakes.)

>But to make the same joke in a public sub that was explicitly set up to ridicule fat people conveys a very different meaning.

How is a sub dedicated to ridiculing fat people more like a public space than a private setting?

Ummm, because the sub is a public forum.

If you are chatting among friends in real life they can see your body language and hear your tone of voice. If someone takes offense you can immediately back-peddle.

Submitting a comment to a webpage (either public or protected) is more like writing graffiti on a public wall. Nobody knows or cares what your intentions were.

I see it more like standing in a corner with your friends talking about whatever (in this case a specific topic). Sure, someone can walk by, overhear the conversation and be offended. But to call that making public comments in some form is missing the point of the distinction between public and private.

I think the argument is that it's a space that is accessible by everyone without any sort of gatekeeping, that makes it a public space. Whereas a forum such as somethingawful would be considered more private as there is a subscription fee for membership.

To me the issue isn't the lack of literal gatekeeping, its the intended audience. If I'm having a conversation in public with my friends, I still have a reasonable expectation that my conversation is "private" as long as I make an effort to keep it among those in my group. That someone could walk by, eavesdrop and overhear something objectionable doesn't meaningfully alter this dynamic. I see subreddits as similar to this. The fact that there is a specific URL that indicates its topic is enough gatekeeping to warrant the conversations as "private", in terms of who is the expected target of the conversation. In the case of fatpeoplehate, the insulation of the content of the sub makes it reasonable to expect that consumers of the content will be "in on the joke". Objecting to the content because its in a "public space" and therefore not appropriate for public consumption doesn't make sense.

It can be accessed by anyone and linked to directly via URL.

You enjoyed getting on those subreddits to spewing hate against black or fat people.

Not because you're racist or "antifatist."

But because it's fun?

Although you do consider those your political views (making fun of people for being black or fat)?

I'm confused.

And appalled.

I think the "fun" comes from the sport of seeing how far they can go in provoking other people by taking extreme behaviors and speaking about them in a casual, normalizing tone.

Which, needless to say, is childish, wasteful of everyone's time on account of its disingenuousness, and doesn't reflect well on one's personal character or maturity.

Well... I think you can have "fun" without it being at anyone's direct and unwilling expense for reasons beyond their control.

That aside, even if most of the users "weren't taking it seriously" it creates the kind of environment where being hateful is tolerated and celebrated... not exactly the kind of community anyone should want to encourage or participate in.

My experience with online communities is that while you don't have to have fun at other people's expense, it's a large subset of what people like to do. For better or for worse a lot of people like to say or do things that push boundaries. Sometimes it's actual hate and sometimes it's not. This kind of behavior goes way back with humanity in general. Trickster heroes have existed in mythos across all cultures and while they do things that are at the expense of others, rarely is it out of malice.

More recent example:

https://livestreamfails.com/post/6039

For those who can't watch: A female streamer is playing PUBG when she is "downed" by other players. Said players then play the ISIS theme that has been played on ISIS execution videos over voice chat before shooting her character in the head. Are these players tolerating and celebrating ISIS or are they deliberately being offensive for humor? Or some other motivation?

For good reason people find this behavior objectionable, but at the same time I don't see how you're going to force people to stop doing things like this.

When fun causes pain to other people, it isn't a type of fun worth having.

Like boxing?

Non-consensual pain

Didn't one need to direct their browser to intentionally visit the subs in question?

People drain swamps and other areas where stagnant water collects to deprive mosquitos of places to breed and grow and affect the population at large, not because they want to visit those places.

Please take some time to reflect and interpret other's comments charitably and arguing their strongest interpretation, not their weakest. It'll help you understand others better and make your own arguments stronger and contribute more productively.

That seems like a great analogy until I remember that we built DC on a drained swamp.

Again, their statement was that if it involved pain then it was unacceptable. I pointed out boxing, they mentioned concentual. I pointed out that the user consented when they visited the URL.

I mean, come on... The two big ones were coontown and fatpeoplehate. What the hell did they think was going to be there?

It's not the content of the subreddits alone, but they inevitably "leak", or actively encourage harassment of people on other subreddits. This is how they can be harmful even to people who never go to the banned subreddit.

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