Hello Nick,
"John Reimer" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
That's a strong accusation, Steve, without knowing me; it's a very
hasty reduction for circumstances, personalities, and factors you are
quite unfamiliar with. I didn't see you mention this sort of thing
while people were talking about physically harming the internet
marketer's in horrible ways in the javascript discussion. :)
It was clear that the violent things said in that discussion were not
intended literally. The images on bearophile's site are *also* clearly
fictional. Thus we don't mind either. But your comments against it
were more serious.
Yes, they were serious. The fact that they are fictional is not an argument
for "right" as I expressed in other posts that brought other analogies into
the spectrum to show that everyone will enforce their limits at some point,
fictional or otherwise.
If instead you had said something like "Argh! This whole furry
movement makes me want to burn out my eyes and take a lawn-mower to
every art institute in the tri-county area!" then we'd be clearly back
in the realm of fiction again, and we'd all acknolegde your viewpoint
on it, chuckle at the amusingly overstated comment, and silently agree
to disagree. And if bearophile decided that he wanted to, he could
think "Hmm, some people that are into the D content really don't like
this other stuff, so I guess I could add some clearer separtion of
topics". (Personally, it doesn't bother me the way it is, though.)
Or, as you've come to realize now, you could have said something like
"Bearophile, I like your D content, but I find some of those images
disturbing, and others might too. Maybe it would be a better site
design to have a stronger separation of content." As I'm sure you
realize, that would have achieved the same result I described in the
paragraph above - but sadly without the "people chuckling at the
amusingly overstated comment" part. I like having amusingly overstated
comments to chuckle at ;-)
Uh uh uh... don't gloat to quickly now. :)
You, Nick, are chuckling now perhaps because I have conceded some points
here? I don't think this or the content is a chuckling matter... but as
you like.
Yes, I should have approached it the way you so adroitly expressed. No,
I don't think my comment was overstated concerning the seriousness of the
material. That's just your opinion based on your experience, Nick. Some
feel that because they have been exposed to much more serious material, that
it lessons the "evil" of the so-called "lesser" forms of it ... this is what
I would call the numbing factor. You can appeal to this form of reasoning,
but I wouldn't use it as an argument to define such limits for others. I've
seen a lot of dead people (maimed and otherwise) before, and thus have less
of reaction than others to seeing death even if I greatly understand the
significance of it. This does not mean that I presume to think that all
people share my desensitization to it. In terms of things that are moral
issues (even if fictional in form), I believe that you vastly underestimating
the potential for damage and influence by public promotion of the material
-- I would say your chuckling is careless. I do ascribe my reasoning to
the standards found in my worldview. You appear to have nothing but personal
experience to appeal to as a standard. If this is the case, be prepared
to see no possible way to define what is trully evil because everyone's level
of experience will render some consensus almost impossible or temporary at
best.
-JJR
