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Comment by mjfisher | Hacker News Reader

I've become increasingly interested in how people become offended recently. Offence tends to be bound up in notions of identity, and I think the way people offend and become offended is increasingly a factor in a world becoming more polarised. Would you be able to expand a little on your feelings? Would you expect people from other cultures mentioned in the article to be similarly offended? I'm not asking you to justify or defend your position - I'm genuinely curious about the feelings you have.

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New account with apropos username, smells like performance art aka trolling.

Thank you for your kind asking. When I had started with this article I literally stopped reading at said phrase. I guess my intetion by posting this comment on HN and not continuing reading was to show my disapproval with said phrase. I assume the author mixed his interesting article with humour in order to appeal to a broader audience. And as it goes with humour there is always someone or something being criticized (being made fun of). It seems to me, there is no way nobody will ever be offended by an article that uses humour. It's normal to me joking with people, being made fun of or make fun of people (minorities, majorities) or things. But this phrase was just too much in that particular moment. I guess there is a golden line between making fun of something but keeping a proper (or interesting) language while applying humour. John Oliver (HBO) as example makes fun of a lot of things but his tone is never like "people = shit". By having a second look at the article in order to see how other cultures might be offended I noticed that Slavic seems to be the only one being reduced that much.

I took your top-post as meant to be funny, because of your username; I laughed anyways.

Similarly, I took the author's "disdain" for slavic as not-real, but rather a meant-to-be-funny turn to avoid a detour into Romanian as the point of TFA was ultimately that the yeses in Romance languages generally derive from something like "this".

I am rather surprised you truly felt offended.

It might not be cultural offence the GP is referring to, but imprecise language in an article about language.

"because they’re on some Slavic shit."

Did Romania at some point get invaded by some other Slav people, is it merely Slavic language osmosis between cross-border dialects?

If the casus belli for US entry into WW2 was referred to as "Some shit the Japanese pulled" in a piece about history, wouldn't that give you pause?

It was an opportunity to teach a reader something, but the opportunity was exchanged for a popular short-cut expression. If found that somewhat irksome as well, even though it did not offend my cultural identity.

I think it was more “an unrelated track of language that we’ll disregard for the purposes of this article”. Being “on that X shit” uses “shit” neutrally. It’s a flexible noun in this context. You can have “that good shit”, for example.

The tone is dismissive, duh.

Let's try another version, some Mexican shit. Trump comes to mind? Yup! You got it.

It is only dismissive ironically - the author is not really belittling Slavic languages. Context and intent are important, and it is possible to be unduly sensitive.

I think it is worth expecting readers to expend a small amount of effort to try and assess a writer's intent, so that we might live in a world where people can use colourful language. Teasing someone is not the same as insulting them.

The more I see these types of confusion in forums, the more I get a sense that many people online (the number of online people is too great to make broad assumptions with certainty) simply don’t have good [enough] reading skills.

Moreover, as with any complex subject, there are possibly other limitations working in paralell (but still connected to the level of reading): the emotional state one’s in when it stumbles something in writing. Again, if one lacks a sufficiently mature reading skill, one tends to take things at face value, without making the obvious leap of understanding them within the larger context both of the text itself and the subject matter at hand.

It's probably quite out of context but I stumbled recently across the news that a left Swiss National Council named "Jonas Fricker" resigned from his position after comparing the transportation of pigs in cars as the Holocaust in one statement. It was obvious what mister Fricker mean't: That it's morally questionable to do harm to pigs. But many (jewish or not) people got frustrated "offline" at face value by his words. Since I mentioned Swiss politicians.. Some right politician "Roger Köppel" was verbally attacking federal president "Simonetta Sommaruga" - as a consequence the federal president and his committee left the federal courtroom. Obviously politics and online forums are not on the same level though - my point is you don't need to be bad in reading in order to feel offended by something (Swiss politicians should know how to read - should)

In a world where pointing out that pure facts such as that Chicago has already had 200 gun homicides this year with its strict gun control laws will get you labelled as a white supremacist, I'd definitely like people to chill out, but alas, no.

As I said, context is important, and other people might perceive your intent incorrectly, depending on your choice of words, and your timing. People should not give a knee-jerk reaction without some effort to understand you, but if you ever feel you are misunderstood you should simply say so, and clarify what you mean. That way, people won't mistake you for a white supremacist.

How about the 2 downvotes my comment, (immediate parent of this comment of yours) received ? Think there was some bad context? Just proves me right.

I don't particularly understand why anyone would downvote you, but your comment didn't offer any reason why one would want to point out that Chicago has already had 200 gun homicides this year with its strict gun control laws, nor why that would result in one being labelled a white supremacist.

It is difficult for others to determine your intent without you providing additional context. That you are reporting a fact is immaterial - the question in others' minds will be why you are reporting that fact, because they are trying to understand what you are trying to show with it. As I said in a previous comment, context and intent are important, and if you are unwilling to provide those yourself, you have to accept that people may misunderstand you. Complaining about those misunderstandings is not constructive, you should simply try and clarify your position.

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