The Political Correctness Haters' Club

[SympathysSilhouette]

I honestly can't take the criticism of "snowflakes" seriously if the other side completely loses their shit over a razor ad.

 

[Stromboli1]

15 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

I honestly can't take the criticism of "snowflakes" seriously if the other side completely loses their shit over a razor ad.

 

My thing with the Gillette ad is that the corporation itself doesn't give a fuck about social issues, they're just trying to look good in the public eye to boost sales and get media attention. Well it worked and more companies will follow suit. Gillette likes to tot that their products are Made in the USA when in fact parts of and full razors are made in other countries. Apple likes to think they're socially cool and edgy, but they have sweatshops in China that make iPhones & IPads for them. Corporations are psychopaths.

[SympathysSilhouette]

12 hours ago, Enrico_sw said:

 

Everyone is entitled to have an opinion and even if you think someone is wrong on a given topic, it doesn't mean that they are wrong on every topic.

 

Besides, I don't think it's a good idea to always reason with left/right wing's rigid framework of interpretation. Common sense can be shared by all political sides. People shouldn't put themselves and others in boxes.

 

Regarding Gillette, this is a completely different topic. It's about advertisers who take themselves for social scientists. Moreover, I think that most men know and have always known that we should treat human beings (women and men) with respect.

 

If people think that we need Gillette's ad in order to realise that it's bad to assault women, then the world is seriously ill. 

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It's an ad. They tapped into the current cultural trends. Like ad companies have always done.

Also, if the message ("set a good example to young boys in terms of how you treat people") bothers you, I really have to wonder about your values.

 

[Enrico_sw]

13 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

It's an ad. They tapped into the current cultural trends. Like ad companies have always done.

 

Yes, it's true: this often happens. That doesn't mean they're right to do it.

Besides, cultural trends are not right per se, just because they are the current ones. The fact that these guys follow some crowds doesn't mean they're right.

 

13 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

Also, if the message ("set a good example to young boys in terms of how you treat people") bothers you, I really have to wonder about your values.

 

Wrong guess.    Please allow me to speak for myself: I think that setting an example to youngsters is essential. Education is a fundamental way of holding people together. The problem with these advertisers is that they confuse education and indoctrination. Education (that I strongly advocate for) teaches critical thinking.

 

This ad takes valid premises, but ends up in a manichean rhetoric, typical from today's PC sophisms.

[gotportugal]

The ad has its positives and negatives.

It seems to seek to ''educate'' some men on how to treat others.

Yet it almost seems like they are generalizing that ALL men do it...it's tiring

[Cult Icon]

@Enrico_sw  Your politics confuse me.  What are your ideals exactly?  Do you want France to be "great again" or are you content with it being just another state of Europe.   It seems to me that you have an unrealistic standard of what you want the media/entertainment/news to be.  You seem to want a media that can only be obtained if it is in fact, quality controlled and regulated somehow by an external agency and based on your particular set of priorities.

 

So what kind of media/entertainment/news coverage do you want?  TBH I find your high level of dislike of the mainstream bias to be overweighed; we don't live in a perfect world but at least we aren't living in a truly dangerous one where tens of millions of people are being killed like in the first half of the 20th century.   The media is heavily inundated with 1st world problems and petty SJW "problems"- perhaps that's a blessing in disguise.  In the end it is just messages being transmitted; people don't necessarily act on them.  In the united states much of the electorate does not even show up to vote for the President or support either party. That's also a blessing in disguise and shows that at least there are substantial share of people in the US that are capable of independent thought.

 

I am not bothered too much about the biased/agenda/advertising driven state of these institutions, because we currently live in quite boring and prosperous times compared to previous generations.  Also, because it could be exponentially worse.   The world is largely de-militarized as a % of GDP and money & consumers (mostly women and children) have taken over the global economy.  

 

There was a day where nationalism/territorial expansion and extreme militarism truly ruled for generations, and that died with the Nazi Reich and the Soviet Union.  Today the West has been de-fanged - both physically and mentally- and they will never be "great again".  France, the UK, Germany, etc. will never greatly expand their population base, their wealth, their military power, and their influence throughout the world.  And you know? That's not a bad thing if you enjoy having a long and pleasant life.  For a nation to attempt to achieve these things requires a price in blood and massive sacrifices for the individual.  

 

On a side note, the rise of the polarized right wing in NA/European politics since Bush Jr/Obama  treated very poorly by liberals/social democrats and the media for the past 18 years.  By condemning huge numbers of people it's an act of arrogance and also malproductive.  Obviously, human needs are not being met.  They are better off trying to understand these unmet needs and seeking to serve them. 

[Cult Icon]

Quote

 

 would tend to partly agree with this if you talked about the media in the 90s, but it's less true now:

- Firstly, because the target of your US journalists is not the US people anymore, it's the globalized bourgeoisie (who speak English - that was not the case 30-50 years ago, eg. nobody spoke English in France).

 

 

This is a right wing conspiracy theory that you would know to be false if you were an American.  The role of "classes" while I sense is stronger in Britain and France is much different in the USA.   First of all, there are many different types of "elite" in a country as massive as the USA...also, blacks/latinos and urban poor people gravitate heavily to the left.

 

When I watch "Eyewitness News" (Channel 7, NY-metro area) it's mainly about things that attract eyeballs :  1. shocking Murders, robberies, rapes  2. Anti-right wing political coverage - this is new york , a super liberal city and region. It would be liberal without regard to the media simply do its demographic, economic, and cultural structures.

 

I think the main thing that frustrates you in your interpretations is that you overestimate the power of the press- you think that they brainwash people to an extreme extent when they actually do so only in varying degrees.  Also, a lot of people DO NOT read/watch the news at all!! Also, a lot of people are intelligent enough to know that the media is written and communicated by various morons.

 

You also underestimate the impact of economic forces and organic cultural change in the US since the 1960s, which have moved in tandem with the media/politics.

[Enrico_sw]

18 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

@Enrico_sw  Your politics confuse me. 

 

Well, that's a good sign. Thanks for the compliment  It means that I'm not trapped in "ready-made" doctrines that give answer to any question, with mechanical reflexes and no freedom of thought. It means that you can't know someone just by reading a handful of their posts.

 

Anyway, I don't like intellectual teams: right/left wing, socialist/capitalist, etc.  These guys all have interesting stuff to say, but at some point, if they are too attached to their team, their thinkings become hemiplegic. 

 

I don't think you belong to a team yourself, but that doesn't "confuse" me. Quite the opposite actually (that's my compliment to you, friend - and that's a sincere compliment).

 

I like to discuss with people. And I like to do it on the basis of what they say, not on the basis of the team that I think they supposedly belong to.

 

18 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

What are your ideals exactly? 

 

You know that I like a lot of stuff in Nietzche's philosophy. So, "ideals" are not my cup of tea. Ideals can be dangerous if they are trusted blindly.

I like "improvement", but ideals... they can really be deceptive.

 

18 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

It seems to me that you have an unrealistic standard of what you want the media/entertainment/news to be.  You seem to want a media that can only be obtained if it is in fact, quality controlled and regulated somehow by an external agency and based on your particular set of priorities.

 

You try to fit people in boxes. You'd like to see if I fit in the "welfare state" team. Well, I don't... You want to know the standard that I like? Well, the media from 15-20 years ago. They existed, so that's not an unrealistic view. They used to compete on a quality basis. Now, the competition is click bait, and trying to fit SJW's agenda. We can take a lot of instances to prove the quality degradation.

Do I have a solution to make them better? No, but I'm not the ruler of the world  , so I don't have to find a solution. Then again, that doesn't mean I can't express my discontent of these lousy media. We live in free countries, where we can express our discontent.

Maybe I could launch my media business. That's not that hard, given how the competition is weak and there is a strong demand for information. People are educated, a huge share of the world population can read these days. It keeps increasing and a lot of them speak your language. In other words, the market is huge.

 

18 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

TBH I find your high level of dislike of the mainstream bias to be overweighed;

 

Overweighed on which basis? The fact that I express my discontent? I think it's always good to express the reality that our eyes see.

 

18 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

In the united states much of the electorate does not even show up to vote for the President or support either party. That's also a blessing in disguise

 

I don't think it's a good sign for democracy when people don't vote. It also shows the limits of the bipartisan system. BTW, it also means that a lot of people don't want to pick a "team".

[Stromboli1]

[Stromboli1]

 

[SympathysSilhouette]

On 2/23/2019 at 3:00 AM, Stromboli1 said:

 

 

Or if a liberal reads this, he might respond with "If a conservative decides he does not want an abortion, he wants abortion banned for everyone."

 

[Enrico_sw]

These teams (left/right, conservatives/liberals, etc.) can be sores. How about seeing stuff "Beyond good and evil"?

 

BTW, American politics rarely brings up interesting stuff these days... and yet, media keep serving it here (they love to hate the orange dude, but it's like a broken record now and it rarely brings interesting debates in its wake)

[Enrico_sw]

On 2/19/2019 at 5:49 AM, Cult Icon said:

 

This is a right wing conspiracy theory that you would know to be false if you were an American.  The role of "classes" while I sense is stronger in Britain and France is much different in the USA.   First of all, there are many different types of "elite" in a country as massive as the USA...also, blacks/latinos and urban poor people gravitate heavily to the left.

 

I think people are too sketchy with the word "conspiracy". I mean, of course, there are a lot of conspiracists, in the social media, and, also in the mainstream media. People end up believing in conspiracy theories when they believe in a unique frame of reference that is so absolute that even facts can't break it.
 

That's not the case in our discussion.

 

Here, we looked at a fracture that has begun to take place in the West decades ago. A fracture between those who benefit from globalisation and those who don't. It's an analysis that is shared by both the right wing (e.g. Christopher Lasch) and the left wing (e.g. Régis Debray).

 

Of course it's not the "only" way to see the world and because I don't believe in "rigid" teams, I believe people are not trapped in their social group (and can be very criticial with their own social group). Still, even if a lot of people escape general tendencies (because there's no determinism), there are cultural tendencies. And this cultural fracture does exist.
 

You can see this "tendency" in big cities. I've traveled a lot and I've seen how big cities in the world, that used to be different, are now starting to all look the same. Same shops. Same habits. Same clothing. Same trends. There's a paradox here: the more city folks claim to be open, the more they look like clones of other city folks around the world. It's the tendency, that I mentionned, in action.
 

To get back to the initial topic (the media),  you can also see this fracture in big media. A fair share of the news I read (in French media) are the same as elsewhere in Western countries! And they're not about "grand topics" or grand debates, they're about societal gossips, with monolithic views. I don't blame journalists, some try to make their work, but it's very hard for them to escape a cultural framework that is heavily imposed by their peers.

 

To summarize all this rambling on , I think that the individual is mostly free, should be mostly free, but not completely free, given that the world outside "oneself" is composed of a lot of little influences that are sometimes very hard to fight. I'd go even further, these influences are sometimes (often!) beneficial... I mean learning stuff sometimes implies not to question everything, it's often a great advantage for us to benefit from previous generations'  thinking.

 

On 2/19/2019 at 5:49 AM, Cult Icon said:

I think the main thing that frustrates you in your interpretations is that you overestimate the power of the press- you think that they brainwash people to an extreme extent when they actually do so only in varying degrees.  Also, a lot of people DO NOT read/watch the news at all!! Also, a lot of people are intelligent enough to know that the media is written and communicated by various morons.

 

No, that's not it. I don't think people are gullible enough to believe all they read, BUT if the press is mostly garbage (which it is), it means that people miss the QUALITY press to better understand the world.

So, that makes us dumber than what we would be with quality press. It's not the end of the world, but it's still a shame.

[Enrico_sw]

@Stromboli1 I'm sure you'll like this one. He talks about Bret Hart.

 

 

 

[Stromboli1]

I'll check it out in the next few days.

[Enrico_sw]

Quote: "There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties", said Jean-Claude Juncker (President of the European Commission) in 2015.

 

Sources:

https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/entendez-vous-leco/lecho-de-leurope-44-de-la-democratie-en-europe

https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2018/06/14/juncker-a-t-il-vraiment-declare-un-jour-qu-il-ne-pouvait-y-avoir-de-choix-democratique-face-aux-trai_1659020

http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/2015/02/02/31001-20150202ARTFIG00405-du-traite-constitutionnel-a-syriza-l-europe-contre-les-peuples.php

 

After such declarations from people who call themselves "respectable", how do they want people to believe in the EU?

 

 

[Cult Icon]

The planks and all sorts of core/ab/thigh etc. exercises done by models, celebs,social media  fitness personalities, etc. seem to rely on the false belief by many people that one can "spot reduce" bodyfat.  

 

While these exercises make sense for a model with very low bodyfat (in order to improve conditioning), for a normal person or even a somewhat"thin" person they don't do much at all except striate the muscle, which is nicely concealed under a layer of bodyfat.....

 

Also, the promotion of smoothies for health is mostly stupid.  Destroying the fiber content and turning all your fruits into insulin spiking "fruit juice" is not a smart move.