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Comment by Igelau | Hacker News Reader

The comment that got flagged for trying to reverse this missed its point, but I thought it had one.

My reply-too-late:

While that is a little hyperbolic, there's definitely a "kid gloves" approach you have to take in a lot of online discussions.

E.g. there was an article on burnout that popped up on HN[0] recently where the author made sure to apologize for being a "privileged white chick" early on. You can't just talk about your problem with burnout and how you handled it, you have to virtue signal about issues that might not even be related first.

I've seen discussions on Twitter get swamped with "what are you doing in our conversation?" replies that drew the line on racial boundaries, when the issues at hand weren't even exclusive to race.

0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28665065

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This happens, but for the example of talking about a TV show, setting your perspective is interesting context. I don't know why it would be described as "kid gloves," though, any more than someone prefacing their comments on industry regulation with the company they work for.

What the OP is describing is more like that the real subject of the board is white male nativism, and in order to talk about any other subject on what is supposed to be a general venue you have to somehow connect it back to the group's tribal concerns. It could almost be a challenge: how would you do it with ice cream? Maybe lead in with a dig at Ben & Jerry's. How would you do it with a new iPhone release? I have no idea.

> you have to virtue signal about issues

Acknowledging your privilege is not categorically virtue signalling. One can think there's not value is acknowledging privilege (or that it might not exist), but let's not pretend it's impossible (or unlikely) that another does.

Are you saying that it’s not categorically virtue signaling because someone can find value in that? Doesn’t sound logical to me. If the detail doesn’t contribute to the discussion but is meant to appease a specific group - that’s definitely closer to virtue signaling than to a genuine expression.

Again, I think the problem here is that you might not find that privilege acknowledgement contributes to the discussion, but there are plenty of people who acknowledge their privilege in the belief that it is contributing to the discussion.

I think it's very telling that folk think that writing "I'm saying this from a position of privilege" invariably is done with a proverbial gun to their head, hoping to evade a public flogging if they fail to do so.

People, myself included, genuinely see disclosing your position of privilege in the same way someone from Company X might say "Disclosure: I work at Company X" when commenting on a post about Company X. Now, it might seem that acknowledging ones privilege is shoe-horned into every conversation, but I challenge you to think about how privilege touches so much of our lives.

Anyways, all I'm saying is you don't have to "find value" in folks acknowledging privilege. You just need to be able to imagine a world in which they do.

I think you've misinterpreted them. The discussion is about the 'intention' of somebody mentioning privilidge, not the social merit of the act itself.

If one mentions it in a genuine way that is contextual to the discussion, then it is entirely appropriate. But if it is blithely and thoughtlessly tacked on to a preceding statement (which, let's face it, happens), then it gradually becomes a platitude and empties the acknowledgement of any charge or primacy when others are mentioning their privilige in a considered and good faith way.

Providing context like that seems alien to me. In the same way as specifying that I am a white cis straight male 98% Northern European and 2% Central European, etc, etc.

Almost everyone is privileged in some way. I, personally, don't need to know whether someone is privileged to evaluate and understand their opinion. But on the other hand I agree with you that some people do in fact want to see this context attached to every post.

It most definitely is, you are signaling your self-awareness and making yourself seem more approachable by a certain category of people.

That's not what "virtue signalling" means though.

Hard to read this comment and not see it as putting an equivalence between these two points. How are anti-Semitic conspiracies regarding miscegenation comparable to annoying virtue signaling by white people?

The comment doesn't regard sort of right-leaning conservatism, these websites cater to the far right, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories, racism, etc. Not the ambiguous, "having an afro is cultural appropriation" sort of racism (or what far left/idpol people consider racism may be), literally people calling for ethnostates and even genocide of groups of people. That's the problem and part of why these sites die, because they get populated by extremists who get kicked off of the larger, corporate platforms.

That's the problem. Nothing to do with "sensitivity online" or whatever, unless sensitivity includes being bothered by fringe ideologies that most of the population don't accept.

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