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Comment by betwixthewires | Hacker News Reader

So first of all, "violence" has a definition. We can't keep expanding the definition in order to justify actual violence in retaliation.

You can be found partly liable for someone's suicide if you've encouraged or groomed someone to commit suicide. Saying mean things to them does not constitute such an action.

We can all talk about how reprehensible kiwifarms is, that it encourages reprehensible behavior, that we would not want to spend time with many of the people there in our lives, that we would disown our children for participating there, etc. But we have to put a stop to this push to take every opportunity to increase the scope of retaliation. We can't change the scope of what violence is or who is responsible for a suicide just because we find their behavior reprehensible and want revenge, not if we want to live in a just society.

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> if you've encouraged or groomed someone

This is literally what they do though. They harass them with the message that they will never stop until they do it. It's not just random bullying that then pushes people over the edge. It's commands that you need to commit suicide. It's calling your family and workplace and telling them you've committed suicide. The "joke" there being that not only do you initially shock the family, but when your target does commit suicide, the family doesn't believe the real call.

Really? Users of the site have actually done this? Do you have any info on instances of this happening? I've always thought it was online "harassment" which is easy to avoid.

I think the definition of violence is a fair discussion. I think it has shifted a bit. To me words that cause physical harm is violence.

Words can't cause physical harm though. Only actions can.

Yes they can. People harm themselves all the time because of words.

People harm themselves. that's the action. thats the violence.

I can go online and say manga sucks. Somewhere, some kid is going to get very, very angry. He/she might even do something very irrational.

People who wish to equate words with violence do so solely to justify responding to words with violence. The goal here is to make it acceptable to kill you for what you say.

You have to admit there is a very significant difference between going online and saying manga sucks and participating in an organized and targeted harassment of a particular person.

I know why you are making that analogy: you are seeking to find a simple demarcation between physical violence and words. But it's clear in both the law and regular life that words and violence are highly intertwined and difficult to separate. This is why courts and trials exist. One person shooting another person is a simple fact. But what if the other person told them they were going to kill them? What if the other person had subjected them to years of physical abuse? What if the other person had subjected them to years of emotional abuse? None of these erase the act of the shooting, but they do contextualize it and change the law's assessment of what needs to happen.

It's also a big stretch to think that most people who equate words with violence are trying to justify doing violence. They are trying to foreground that words do indeed cause violence: either by inciting other people to physical violence or, as the GP has said, people do violence to themselves. Peoples' bodies do have harmful stress responses to being repeatedly berated and placed in an environment of emotional adversity. Those who place people in those situations are culpable, even if they did not put hands on those people.

It's not a stretch at all. They want to punish words as if they were violence, i.e. put people in prison, send armed men to arrest them forcibly, etc. That's at the very least. This is openly stated, "some words should be illegal" is 1000% a sanction on violence against people for the words they speak.

In your examples, you get it right at the end: we seek to contextualize actions and use peoples words as evidence of context. It is the context of the acts that matter, not the words said.

Right, and zoomers would probably broadly agree with that, but almost everyone else doesn't, so it's very contentious. "Sticks and stones" liberals still basically control the world, at least until we start dying off in 30 years or so.

It's a lie. Saying words are violence is an attempt to make it so, not an observation.

People who say that are trying to use their words to force you to not have the right to use your words.

I'm not a zoomer.

I don't think it's as lopsided as you think. I think HN has a very strong, and fairly rigid, view on free speech.

And I think a much larger % than you imply see a grey area that is causing real, physical IRL harm.

It's hard to write down what I'm talking about. But it's pretty easy to see it.

Bullying has always caused physical harm. Both the kinetic type of pushing and this transitive type we are talking about.

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