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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

That's precisely the irritating image people like that have of themselves, which does not correspond to reality. What does it mean "beholden to trigger warnings"? I'm not sure in which sense you are beholden to something which you likely haven't even encountered outside of internet posts making fun of trigger warnings. What magic words are those? Not saying n*gger in polite company isn't censorship, it's just good manners. And who exactly has been fired for "believing male and female are real concepts"? This is some borderline delusional shit.

The "I know I'll be downvoted for this brave opinion" bit is the icing on the cake.

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> Not saying n*gger in polite company isn't censorship, it's just good manners.

Is this not polite company? Do you think adding an asterisk makes a significant difference?

I'm black myself, do I get to say it? Could the question be more complicated than you're making it out to be?

edit: I mean - MCNeil at the NYT was quite literally doing what you just did: discussing whether certain language was acceptable or should be punished. Imagine being fired for this post two years from now. I don't care about McNeil in particular (the US is an "At-Will" country, workers have no real rights, he's a privileged guy), but the state of free expression right now is bizarre. The fact that it comes when old (and most of new media) media is more consolidated than it's ever been is not coincidental.

While I don't think the GP post is correct, counter-culture necessarily has bad manners, because manners are all about cultural norms.

This is a ridiculous assertion. That might be true if mainstream culture was polite. But it isn't.

It's unfailingly polite regardless of how cruel it is.

Give me an example of a counterculture that was not derided as rude by the mainstream of the time?

That is ridiculous. Newscasters are far less polite and far more openly partisan, combative, and opinionated than they use to be. Comments on articles and videos, and in social media, are far less polite than people replying with letters to the press in the past.

Elon musk argued that calling someone a pedophile was within bounds of polite banter on Twitter and people agreed with him.

I'm pretty sure if you ask anyone they would say there was nothing polite about that exchange. By what definition was that exchange polite? None that are based in reality or relevant.

I'm not interested in arguing about the definitions of words.

I think you are saying that mainstream culture has adopted rude behavior, while I am saying that any behavior adopted by mainstream culture is, by definition, not rude.

I guess you should be considered lucky for not being exposed to the Freeper comments section 20 years ago, or Fox News comments sections, or Patch.com comments sections. They've always been bad.

I've worked at at least one place where if I stated "male and female are real concepts" I would have raised eyebrows at min and received some official reprimand at max

Well yeah if I said "bacon was made to be eaten" in disdain to vegetarians, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews that would get essentially the same reaction because it is essentially wrongly invalidating others by deliberate exclusion.

well, he was downvoted. but not overwhelmining so; let's call it controversial.

> And who exactly has been fired for "believing male and female are real concepts"?

I recall some kind of minor debacle about a Stack Overflow moderator (or employee? details are vague) who got in trouble for something related to individual choice of pronouns. It seems to be what they're refering to.

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