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Comment by undefined1 | Hacker News Reader

also, as Stephen Fry famously said, “It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

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It does serve a purpose. It announces to everyone in their vicinity that this fragile human is deficient and should only be interacted with via great caution.

edit: I don't understand the downvotes here. Is it considered poor manners to point out that people don't get to control how people perceive them?

Not 100% sure why you were being down voted.

Maybe you should state more explicitly the premise, which is that if you are easily offended you might have a weak mind. I think it is reasonable to discuss this point, as it may have some merit.

That quote always bothered me. Does that mean that Fry doesn't care about other people's feelings? He sounds like an a-hole.

The unbridgeable gap here is that the speaker of a phrase cannot with 100% certainty know whether a phrase will cause offense - "being offended" lives in the listener's mind. So we have to fall back to a "reasonable person" presumption. To do otherwise is to cede all control of public conversation to people who wield bad-faith claims of offense as a weapon.

If I say something, and have a good-faith belief that no one would be offended by it, and 99.99% of people agree that it was not an offensive statement, but one person claims to be offended by it - should I be forced to apologize under pain of being branded an "asshole"?

For the sake of argument let's say I'm offended by your "just asking questions" style statement that "Fry doesn't care about other people's feelings". Do you think it would be reasonable for you to apologize to me or retract your "question"?

I agree with you but i think Fry said it poorly and too many people are using this quote.

In the professional office environment this is exactly how it works. There is no "reasonable person" because it only takes 1 to go to HR.

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