What’s the Correct Word For That Stuff We Used To Call “Irony”?
Mike Brock wrote a moderate post earlier this week on Kinsella/Warman (yes, I know), at the end of which he generously and sonorously concludes that “Warren Kinsella is not an evil man. Neither is Richard Warman. But as these names remind us, and so the proverb goes: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
This astonishing generosity of spirit on Mike’s part elicited the following responses from his peanut gallery:
“They are both grotesquely evil individuals, with evil values, and evil intentions. They use evil methods, evilly, to undertake evil actions with the aim of creating a more evil world.”
“Within the context of the widespread harm these two individuals have caused millions of Canadians, it would be difficult to identify two less evil individuals in Canada today.” (I think the writer meant “more evil” – Ed.)
I don’t think Stalin, Che, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, or Mohammad thought of themselves as evil either.
If those two twits are not the epitome of evil, what is?
All this struck me as a perfect example of the process of stripping a word of all meaning through overuse and idiotic hyperbole. The notion of “evil” is one of the most important, complex and powerful ideas in our moral lexicon. When you begin to use it as a synonym for “Someone I Don’t Like”, you strip the word of any real meaning, and you make it impossible to discuss REAL evil when it comes along.
Put simply: when you equate mocking Stockwell Day with murdering six million, you’ve just smashed your own moral compass and declared yourself an idiot.
Oh, and about that “Stuff We Used To Call ‘Irony”…
The title of Mike’s thread was ” Everything In Perspective”.
You’re EVIL, Balbulican! And so is your evil post. And that damned evil dog of yours. And what kind of evil car do you drive with evil abandon anyway?
It’s an evil Honda Civic. Not as evil as some, but evil enough. However, I’m saving up for a Coupe D’Evil.
It’s all part of the stupification of western political dialog – words that “mean bad things” being attached to people with ideas you don’t agree with.
The fact of the matter is that if/when real evil, or real fascism, or real antisemitism, rear there ugly heads in the blogosphere or on news/talk radio most people won’t know just what it is because it doesn’t look anything like “someone who didn’t vote the same way they did in the last election“.
It’s all part of the stupification of western political dialog
Actually I think these serve as auditions for the role of Grand Inquisitor.
Well, if we needed to learn out about evil, the concentration of commenters in that thread who seem positively energised by negativity and strife (while being utterly humourless about it) could provide no better example than that.
That’s the only evil I recognise and, since the advent of the Internet, it’s been fascinating to find out just how much more common it is than I ever thought.
I blame Evel Knievel.
You’re right. Those comments do damage to the point I’m trying to make. I deleted one comment from that thread. But I really hate deleting comments, as it brings on needless (and vacuous) accusations of censorship.
There are people on the right who due, really *hate* Warren Kinsella. Just like there are people on the left who really *hate* Kate McMillan (or me for that matter).
These people come out of the woodwork, every time such a name is invoked.
In fact, your commenters were going in exactly the opposite direction from you – your post essentially said “calm down, folks, Kinsella ain’t the anti-christ”. Whereupon a few folks began to chant…”Kin-sell-a—An-Ti-Christ—”
As I note in the thread above, Mike, it is an awesome and terrifying power we bloggers wield, for good or evil. The bidding war here at the bunker is still on…we can be swung either way, Good or Evil, depending on the offers we received. Operators are standing by…call now!
The html strike element is your friend MikeFar better than deleting.
Those comments do damage to the point I’m trying to make.
Your posts have points to them?!?! They look to me like nothing more than adolescent cries for attention.
But I really hate deleting comments, as it brings on needless (and vacuous) accusations of censorship.
I think just stepping in once in a while and pointing out/challenging the irrationality would be enough. That is, if you are able to recognise it (something of which I’m not sure).
Some of the worst wingnut commenters persist only because Conservative bloggers are so uncritical of what they say.
Speaking of vile commenters…
What? Have I said anything vile at your blog? Or have you been stalking me?
*tsk*…naughty, naughty.
Ti-Guy,
Does this comment ring a bell?
“Wow…that bear-trap between your legs is really snapping furiously these days.
Here’s something meaty to sink that vagina dentata of yours into.”
Yes, we track your IP address. Yes we keep records of your anonymous comments.
You are a pathetic, repugnant, and vile little weasel.
You are a pathetic, repugnant, and vile little weasel.
I have yet to see Ti-Guy go after someone’s job just because they called him a bad name. When he does you can attach those labels to him, you pathetic, repugnant, vile little weasel.
Yes, we track your IP address. Yes we keep records of your anonymous comments.
Heh. Well whoever “we” is, you’re going to have to get a lot better at the tracking. Do you want my employers coordinates?
Seriously, are you having an episode?
Just his?
Or are all your visitors and commenter’s subject to the same level of “record keeping”?
Well, Stageleft, if nothing else the brownshirts are thourough. You do know they have dossiers on all of us, don’t you?
stageleft,
It’s no secret that I have no affinity for anonymous commenters. I can tell you, though, the vast majority of anonymous commenters post under a primary name (like Ti-Guy) and also often use other aliases (or “Anonymous”) based on the vitriol of their post.
It’s not so much an effort to “out” them, or “identify” them in real life. I have no desire to “out” Ti-Guy, for example. But I do find it interesting the things he says when he chooses to use other aliases (ie. “CBC Fan”).
He usually posts as Ti-Guy, but recently posted this as “Anonymous”:
“Yawn…is that Liberal I smell fuming?” No, it’s your blazing cat fur, dear. Might I recommend Summer’s Eve?
I never wrote any of that. I’ve always posted under Ti-Guy at your blog.
Well, Stageleft, if nothing else the brownshirts are thourough. You do know they have dossiers on all of us, don’t you?
Well, all bloggers would have similar records, wouldn’t they?
I never wrote any of that. I’ve always posted under Ti-Guy at your blog.
Really? Then who else with the same IP address, browser version, and OS did?
I don’t know…The Illuminati?
Take your meds, Mike. You’re going off the boil again.
You wrote that. Admit it, you little worm.
Or what? You’ll send me correspondence posing as a Holocaust survivor or will post my name and workplace coordinates on your blog, the consequences of which could be a campaign of illegal harassment, which might include registering domains in my name and pointing them to NAMBLA?
Gee, now I’m kind of intrigued by the possibility of being the victim of a Vast Wingnut Conspiracy trifecta.
Set that up, will ya Mikey? Anyway, gotta go. Gotta email Crossroads Television System.
Gee I was wondering why Ti-Guy/CBCfan/anonymous hadn’t popped by recently, I see Mike Brock let the cat out of the Bag. SDA,he and I had been tracking his little forays by IP. Oh Mikey, I was hoping we could have really set Wee Ti -Guy up.
You guys really enjoy this “chase people around the net and be vaguely threatening” thing, don’t you?
Well, carry on. Have fun. Don’t mind the grownups talking.
It’s an authoritarian/big brother thing. The hypocrisy of people who pontificate upon the rights of the individual to freedom of speech and the right to privacy and engage in such practices behind the scenes appears to be totally lost on them.
– a bunch of little Kim Jong Il’s spouting ‘my people have the right to say whatever they want….‘ while monitoring and recording what they say, when they said it, and where they said it from, so that it can be used against them.
It’s an authoritarian/big brother thing. The hypocrisy of people who pontificate upon the rights of the individual to freedom of speech and the right to privacy and engage in such practices behind the scenes appears to be totally lost on them.
There is nothing authoritarian about opening up my logs, looking at an IP, and tying that IP to a name. It’s something anybody can do.
You’re anonymity on the internet is the equivalent of you putting your ID down on the counter, and simply trusting that the other people in the room won’t come up and read your name off it.
It’s always been this way. As a software engineer, I’ve always understood this, since the wee-beginnings of the internet (my first job was at a small ISP in Oakville, Ontario). We had people get outed, all the time, even back then.
Computers have this funny way of logging EVERYTHING you do. When you’re out on the internet, you have this funny way of leaving your calling card everywhere, even if you don’t know it.
We should also note that the internet is a “public space” but rather a tangled-web of interconnected, privately owned computers.
When you come to my blog, you are communicated with a privately owned machine. You are transmitting TCP packets to my system, the headers of which, contain your source IP address. Your assertion is that by, daring to look at those headers and tying them to other relevant information that I am being a hypocrite in my “free speech” march.
This is first and foremost, problematic logic. You are confusing the concept of privacy with freedom of speech. I quite think they are separate issues.
I support privacy rights, by the way. But I don’t necessarily view the internet as an inherently “private space” as I’ve said. Especially in the context of me paying for bandwidth, for my server to send data to people. That being said, I have no outward desire to out people.
As I’ve said before, the problem with Beemer is that he was far too obvious.
I also think it’s inherently rude to lunge insults at me, and make defamatory statements against people from behind the wall of anonymity. I think it’s cowardly and shows an unwillingness to face the consequences of your words.
You see, I work of a publicly traded company, in which people from my company are aware of my blog, and my TV appearances, etc. There are a set of rules they have placed on me, however: 1. I cannot mention there name in connection to any political discourse. and 2. I should not make comments on the industry in which I work, publicly.
This is a voluntary concession of my free speech. Voluntary. If I violate that agreement, I will be reprimanded and our terminated from the company. And justly so.
We make choices about self-censorship all the time, in relation to how we navigate our relationships with other people. Sometimes it’s simply not strategic to tell the world what you really think.
But people like Canadian Cynic hide behind a wall of anonymity because of the vulgarity of their words. They fear rejection among polite company. From behind this wall of anonymity, they lunge attacks that someone like myself, may even find myself reprimanded by my real-life peers for doing.
So the wall of anonymity, to me, is a way to gain leverage over those who speak in their own name. It’s why I don’t have respect for the concept.
Mike, your efforts to turn your outing into some kind of noble act have been nothing short of encyclopedic. Depending on your audience, you’ve claimed you did it to humiliate a Liberal, out of righteous indignation at his “failure” to “take responsibility”, because you can, because he was unbearably rude to you, because YOU don’t believe HE should be blogging from work, yadda yadda yadda…always pitched in whatever voice you think a given audience will buy.
But see, over here, we respect a blogger’s anonymity, and we think your action was hypocritical, petty, and contemptible. Now, those are purely personal opinions, and have no objective merit. They are simply the result of parsing your conduct through our values, and have no more weight than that. Our values are a bit different from yours, and we really do believe in freedom of speech and expression.
Well, to me: being a hypocrite is acting in a way contrary to ones own beliefs.
Your definition of hypocrite seems to be a little more projective.
“Projective”?
Mike, what you you did to Don was petty, childish and a response so out of proportion to his comment on your site that I had to pause and double check if it was actually you that had done it. Honestly, you and I have “known” each other since the old “spinkiller” days and although we have bickered ferociously at times, I always respected you. I still do, but this incident was way over the line and (I suspect) symptomatic of some of the company you are keeping these days.
But people like Canadian Cynic hide behind a wall of anonymity because of the vulgarity of their words. They fear rejection among polite company. From behind this wall of anonymity, they lunge attacks that someone like myself, may even find myself reprimanded by my real-life peers for doing.
*yawn* Get off the cross, Mike – it’s Easter and you’re hogging all the attention. And just out of curiosity, how does one “lunge an attack”? I think you mean “launch” but far be it from me to correct you … you might decide to out me for my unmitigated cheek.
Nope, that part is the big brother thing coming into play, the authoritarian part comes with how you use that information. Personally I have better things to do with my time than to go through referrer logs to find out who was saying what and from where they may have said it, and then record that information – to each their own I guess, ymmv.
That’s a personal choice isn’t it? I do consider privacy and freedom of speech to be very closely related on the Internet, it comes from running web space where government workers and insiders had the opportunity to make corruption, favoritism, nepotism, and partisanship, public – for obvious reasons being anonymous was the preferred method of doing that. It made not only for very good reading, but made some politicians very unhappy, and landed me in court twice.
I have chosen to make this a space where individuals can, if they wish, post under any name or handle that they want with the assurance that they will not be identified unless I’m yanked into court and presented with a court order to do so. I want a space where people can step outside the box that they, however it happened, have ended up in and speak their mind; if commenter’s do not have the right (in as much as I am able to provide it) to privacy here that isn’t gonna happen, again, it’s a personal choice, ymmv.
People here are judged by those who choose to hang out here based on their thoughts, ideas, wit, and their humour, and not their posting name. If they’re idiots the little community that has formed here ignores them until they go away, it’s happened before and I’m sure it will happen again; I’ve got a thick skin and it would take considerably more than the mutterings of some anonymous troll insulting me to make me violate the privacy of those who choose to hang out here by going through referrer logs trying to identify them.
As you’ve said before, freedom of speech should mean the right to say things that may offend some people. I agree, and have said here (and in other places) on different occasions that we as a (at least semi-) free people have no right not to be offended, and if I offended easily the last thing I would do is pay to have a political blog.