Hacker News Reader

Comment by ahelwer | Hacker News Reader

I don't really believe this. I've seen too much of the average gamer's opinions on women; this shouldn't be dismissed as a bunch of 4channers being 4channers. There are deep problems in the community and they need to be acknowledged and fought.

If you want to see how pervasive the problem is, there's a subreddit called ShitRedditSays which records horrible (and highly upvoted) submissions and comments. This is a real problem with real attitudes.

Edit: Ah yes, I should have known that mentioning SRS would garner such a reaction... people really don't seem to like being called out on their crappiness.

View on HN

Well, first of all it's frankly impossibly difficult to distinguish between people who genuinely believe in the things they're saying, people who don't but say these things out of a perception that they're acceptable, and people who don't but say them to get a reaction. Attempts at lumping all of those into a single group and one-dimensionally analyzing are doomed to failure.

Second, SRS is... well. SRS is actually kind of a good example of that problem: it started out as a bunch of guys parodying (among other things) stereotypes of radical feminism for the lulz, and then picked up some people who went along because they took the posts seriously and as a sign that it was OK, and also picked up some true believers. Now it's impossible to tell those groups apart, and it's mostly just as shitty as everything else these days.

Talk about not getting it (on SRS).

SRS parodies how feminists are usually portrayed by others – that doesn’t mean they think the vile shit linked there really isn’t shitty. How can you not understand that?

Believe me, I'm quite sure that I "get it".

"I'm not a violently hateful person but I act like one, and that's the joke" is not something that helps; it's something that makes problems worse. And I certainly "get it" enough to know that if I said that there I'd receive a response of "LOL TONE ARGUMENT BENNED!!!11one", which just kinda proves the point in my original comment, y'know?

In all seriousness, if people want to do good and fight evil, donate to/volunteer at a shelter. SRS is, at best, the equivalent of a yellow-ribbon bumper sticker, and accomplishes about as much as those do. And at its worst, it's people who either are in need of or are pretending to be in need of a whole lot of counseling.

Point is, sometimes you just wanna vent because no one understands you. SRS is exactly that place. It’s not for activism, it’s not for changing stuff, it’s for venting frustration and having fun with that.

The point of SRS is not to change the world, it’s to have a place where you can laugh at idiots and have no one spoil that fun. And that’s perfectly alright.

Point is, sometimes you just wanna vent because no one understands you. SRS is exactly that place.

These two sentences do not go together.

People go there to vent because no one in the larger community understands them. SRS is of course a place where they are understood.

It’s like a tumblr making fun of fundamentalist christian screeds. It’s not intended to convince any fundamentalists that they are wrong, but it’s a place to vent and laugh together with like-minded people.

Again, no.

If "no-one understands" a typical SRS'er, why do they have I-don't-even-know-how-many-now subreddits with healthy numbers?

If it exists solely for the purpose of venting (not a downvote brigade, wink wink, don't touch the poop!) and not for accomplishing anything else, then why do SRS'ers so often seem to be charging into other parts of reddit and getting into such dramatic arguments?

Finally, if you really just want a place to make fun of stupid crap? Try /r/worstof or /r/subredditdrama, both of which actually do that.

You're proving the parent's point. ShitRedditSays is a troll subreddit created by SomethingAwful forums. It's purpose is to parody the extreme outrage that occurs anytime something un-PC is said. The fact it has attracted some people who are actually serious is like how The Colbert Report has a conservative following.

Could you provide some background on that? I was under the impression that ShitRedditSays is an outgrowth of the attempt to embarass reddit into getting rid of the child porn subforum on their site.

Well, the obvious starting point is this[1] SA Thread that directly led to the Reddit-embarassing that resulted in the dropping of the pedo boards. You may or may not be able to view it, but the short version is that they created a "Reddit bomb"[2] and sent it to a number of news agencies. There is a followup thread which confirms that several goons were the some of the first SRS subreddit mods, but with the exception of the thread below, most Reddit threads end up getting shitcanned because of the eventual devolution of the thread. I'm hunting through the archives, but I'm unsure if the thread even exists anymore, as the search can't find it.

Edit: It doesn't exist in my post history anymore, so I'm pretty sure that entire thread was purged.

[1]http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=346...

[2]http://pastebin.com/PenXAGz7

A humanitarian mission from the Something Awful forums to combat the omnipresent misogyny on reddit to follow up on the successful removal of child porn might be ironic, unprecedented and doomed to fail, but I don't see why it's necessarily in bad faith or "trolls"?

Just an aside, it wasn't child porn, but the collation of public photos of under-dressed minors. The witch-hunt associated was basically a witch-hunt against thoughtcrimes (the horror of someone wanking it to a minor), not against actual child abuse.

I feel this is important because I've used Reddit for years and I don't think it's fair to associate them with child porn, because they have never tolerated child porn.

Actually, most of the images were swiped from girls' Facebook and Photobucket accounts without their permission. These were definitely not meant to be spread around for wanking material.

Nope, you are quite wrong, actually.

Obviously, 'gamers' is a very inhomogeneous group of people.

You could say much harsher things about people watching horror movies in theaters.

Another recent incident involving (an apparently well known) comdeian Tosh-something which might point to a larger cultural trend as the culprit rather than a bunch of kids on 4chan:

http://breakfastcookie.tumblr.com/post/26879625651/so-a-girl...

A lot of comedy depends on reversal of expectations so the more political correctness is expected from people, the more politically incorrect jokes you will hear.

As to rape jokes, I think George Carlin said it best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FsfLPohZ_c

Pretty much. This is an opportunity to recognize a rampant problem, not something endemic to two website communities.

Believe it, they brag about it. The whole thing was just some people using a bot to spam the same couple comments over and over. They did it because it gets a reaction. People who tried posting well thought out arguments as to why Anita is wrong had their comments removed. Any form of abusive crap was highlighted, as a means to extract further sympathy. So the 4chan crowd jumped on it and started spamming shit comments.

/r/SRS is a really bad example to bring up, given that 95%+ of the stuff they post is just hypersensitive whining about politically incorrect jokes or obvious trolling. Normal people don't care about politically incorrect jokes. The 5% that are actual bad posts are almost always in the negatives, not "highly upvoted".

Normal people should care about politically incorrect jokes. I would also disagree about the 95/5 split on that, but this is clearly coming more from feel than actual data.

Regarding them not being highly upvoted, are you kidding me? There is serious crap that is both highly upvoted and discussed. It's terrible.

First of all, your assertion that people should care about politically incorrect jokes is both baseless and irrelevant. Whether you think people should have a sense of humour or not is a matter of opinion, not fact. But I wasn't sharing an opinion on it, simply pointing out that the majority of people do not share the view of the hypersensitive whiners on SRS.

As for the content of that subreddit, go look for yourself. Current front page:

1. Obvious joke 2. Pretending it isn't possible for women to be privileged 3. Being offended at the notion that teenage girls are attractive 4. Obvious joke 5. Being angry at finding a woman attractive 6. Obvious joke

I think the pattern is pretty obvious here.

Looking at your posts in this thread, there's nothing I could possibly say that would change your mind on any of these points. All I can say is that third-wave feminism is valuable, and I hope you come to see its wisdom one day.

If you are convinced that I won't change my mind, why would you then try to take a parting shot at changing my mind? I hope you never have to grow up and meet the real world, and realize how trivial and pointless modern "feminism" is. I hope you can hang on to your naivety for as long as possible.

Congrats on unlocking the ability to downvote. I see you are using it productively, and not at all as if you are on reddit.

I don't have the ability to downvote, sorry to disappoint you. I know it can be hard to accept, but it is possible that I am not the only person who thinks your post was childish and condescending, and added nothing to the discussion.

"It's just a joke".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0i0RXMvzMs

Reply on news.ycombinator.com