Re: Announcement, musical professor banned from the forum
There are many old tales, intended to warn against dealing with the devil, that demonstrate wishes or requests being granted but twisted in undesirable ways. A child in such a story could wish to be the fastest runner in his gym class, with any number of outcomes. He may be unaffected but all of his classmates become horribly crippled. He may still lose every race because he was granted the ability to just speak faster than any of them. Maybe he can run and win, but he is never able to stop running until he dies. The idea is sometimes referred to as the "Jackass Genie", and by fluctuating between taking every wish as perfectly literal or substituting in figurative meanings, it becomes nearly impossible to actually get what you truly wanted with your wish.
There are many people in this world who turn into a version of the "Jackass Genie" when minority groups are involved. I can think of plenty of people who have race on the brain. To them, the whole world is against their particular race, and they will go to great lengths to twist anything said into being about race. Choose white rice over fried rice at dinner? They'll be offended because in their mind you've just made some sort of jab at them. If you watch one TV show over another, they will believe it is because the show has a different number of actors from a particular ethnic background. If you try to explain that the ethnic background of the actors has nothing to do with what shows you watch, the "Jackass Genie" is still in effect, and will twist that to further pull you down the same path. "So you admit then that you don't care about people from race such-and-such!" You cannot win, ever.
In more recent years gender issues seem to have risen up to the same intensity as racial ones. I've tried to have conversations with women who turn literally everything into attacks on feminism. No matter how careful you are, everything said is going to be twisted using leaps that are so convoluted and extreme that no sane person is going to follow. People eventually get shoved into so deep a hole that they simply give up and walk away from the conversation, feeling frustrated and ashamed at the state of society, while the "Jackass Genie" leaves feeling further justified in their cause... since they just exposed another anti-feminist.
Lundin, you are in a situation where you just aren't going to be able to win. I think you can see that anything you're saying keeps being put through the same filter, and will continue to push you down the same path. You have to fight the urge to fix the situation/misunderstanding because this is a trap, and you're already in it. Like the example above, the only answer is to walk away and feel frustrated.
From the very start of this I've been trying to keep myself out of the trap, but I felt compelled to jump in long enough to help you get out. No one ever, EVER, realizes that they are playing the role of a "Jackass Genie", and being accused of it tends to upset people. In real life conversations it results in the Genie then trying to Show me how they are being perfectly reasonable with how they've interpreted everything said, because they are not capable of seeing how insane their leaps are. "But Jeremy, my co-worker said said he'd see me tomorrow! That means he is watching me at work which means he doesn't believe I can do my job properly because I am a woman, and it also means he expects me to be there because obviously I can't afford to take a day off, which is because women get paid less than men! How could anyone disagree that he made a blatantly sexist statement against me as a woman?!" So I walk away and get thrown into the anti-feminist camp along with the poor sap I was stepping in to save. Clearly if I walk away or try to stay out of it, then I've sided against the Genie and therefore are also against their cause.
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
