Hacker News Reader

Comment by stnmtn | Hacker News Reader

You just ignored my points entirely.

If white supremacists keep saying the phrase "googly moogly" to each other and to others; as a way to identify themselves as alt-right, and push it over and over again, it becomes a dogwhistle.

It doesn't matter that minus context, "googly moogly" doesn't mean anything. "Those stupid libs are saying 'googly moogly is racist now! look how far the left has gone! bunch of snowflakes"

This is how dogwhistles literally work, and you have to engage with my point about dogwhistles or else you are simplying not having the conversation at all, you are arguing from a point that has no context or meaning.

It's more important exactly who is using the phrase and why, than what the phrase is.

View on HN

Your sentiment is the root problem of the issue. Any issue that touches on problems facing white people will of course be reflexively supported by the alt right, white supremacist, etc., as well. This makes it impossible to talk about these issues without being associated with those groups or accused of "dog whistling". Similarly, if you speak up about men's issues you are considered part of the manosphere, a misogonyst and probably alt right. Basically any opinion that doesn't sing to the choir is labeled a "dog whistle" and dismissed. Basically we have allowed a small group of anxious people to silence all discussion and it's frankly destructive and untenable in the long run.

I think you've clearly gone off the deep end when you are obsessing about what innocuous phrase has secret meaning to white supremacists. Like the freaking out over the "OK" sign, and the Hispanic guy who got fired because he used it without knowing the super secret meaning.

Seriously, these white supremacists are twisting you into hysterics and make you look like a fool with your obsession with decoding their secret symbols.

No, it's easy and not "off the deep end at all"

The OK symbol is completely ok. There's nothing wrong with it. There's a certain sect of internet cretins who use it to dogwhistle to each other.

When someone uses the OK symbol, it literally means nothing. If that person also belongs to or is adjacent to that certain sect.. then you can start to ask questions but still mainly assume innocent intent.

If that person is using the OK symbol while wearing a MAGA hat, posting pictures with Pepe the frog doing the OK symbol, etc.. You can see clearly the throughline here and it's not illogical or wrong to see what that person is clearly trying to do and call them out on it.

I'm not 'decoding secret symbols', and if a hispanic person truly was fired for just doing an "OK" sign and nothing else, then no one who is serious on the left should support that as that is beyond absurd. For some reason, my bet is that there was a bit more going on than that though, but I could be wrong!

You can look up the story, it was in the fevered summer of 2020 when lots of people were trying to get other people fired for innocent boring stuff in the name of Justice.

Yeah, that's extremely stupid. It seems like he was suing his employer for this, hopefully it went well: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin...

After the points I made, do you still think I'm being illogical and off the deep end? I really think what I'm saying about recognizing dogwhistles is important and common sense, but maybe I'm wrong.

Our current hyper-partisan always-on tribalism is a fertile ground for witch hunts and rumors that go off the rails.

The Hispanic OK sign dude is one particularly egregious example of this. I think in most of these cases, the company thinks it's easier to fire the person than bother to investigate what actually happened.

So it's very important to verify that a so called "dog whistle" isn't a hoax or overblown, and sometimes even if some Internet trolls are trying to launch a dog whistle bringing attention to what they're doing is helpful marketing for their cause with all the attention it brings.

I'm orthogonal to your points. I'm not as attached to the symbolic online battle, and I appreciate good trolling.

> It's more important exactly who is using the phrase and why, than what the phrase is.

This is thought-terminating tribal idiocy.

Let's put it in tribal terms for you. If your tribe self-owns by jumping into an obvious bear trap, that's an L for you and yours. Take some responsibility, and maybe slow down to consider the words next time.

Since I don't normally follow "white supremacists", and I would have a hard time finding them even if I wanted, how am I supposed to know what's a dogwhistle and what is not?

It's totally okay to use the OK symbol and pepe the frog, etc. I should have made that more clear; there's no problem in any way whatsoever with them until you start to see a pattern of the person using them being alt-right or adjacent, flirting with it, etc

You ignored their points entirely so I'm not sure why anyone should have to read that BS wall of text.

What were their points, and how do my points not address them? I very much responded, and I should be more clear than until a person is clearly alt-right, them using the OK symbol or pepe the frog is 100% fine and I wouldn't even think about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com