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This is, sadly, serious.
I had a talk with a friend last night about Britney Spears.
The thing is--Britney Spears is a sort of laughingstock. (I can see you're all shocked and surprised). My friend was very harsh in her criticism of Spears--in her manner of dress, her music, her lifestyle...everything. She knows more about Spears' current tabloid run than I do--it makes me extremely uncomfortable to read things about people's private lives, especially at the level of the celebrity mags, because I have no way of parsing the truth from them.
So, granted, some of the things she was saying might have been true. If I'm to believe knowledgeable people about the subject, the magazines I despise the second-most (worst are the ones where all is smooth airbrushing, faux glamour, and polished prose), are in fact damnably accurate, due to potential litigation.
However, I don't believe that we can judge people themselves--especially not based on what publishers with vested interests in the subject try to tell us.
So I stopped her--rather abruptly--and said just that. And we changed the subject.
But this got me to thinking: this isn't the first time I've spoken up and asked people to change their conversation based on what I find offensive. Online, I just leave the conversation. I know it's counter-productive to try to protest--people just protest back. Loudly.
But in real life, I've been met with surprisingly good rates of success. The times that I can remember doing this have been times when I felt that just leaving wasn't an option. Most times, I've been in my own apartment. Many times, I've confronted people I didn't know particularly well, as well as people I knew very well.
So--would I annoy you? What would you do if you felt a conversation was damaging, hurtful, or wrong? I'm not talking about disagreeing with someone's viewpoints, exactly--more with the entire conversation, be that the tone of the comments, or the assumptions therein.
Because to me, there's a difference between saying, "I really hate the U.S.'s current policy and I think that Bush is an idiot for thinking that the War in Iraq was a good idea," and saying, "Bush is an idiot who deserves to be taken out and brutalized and then shot and then dragged through the streets."
If you really believe the latter, then you damn well better have justification for it, in my opinion.
Otherwise, I don't think hyperbole like that does anyone any good.
Opinions?
I had a talk with a friend last night about Britney Spears.
The thing is--Britney Spears is a sort of laughingstock. (I can see you're all shocked and surprised). My friend was very harsh in her criticism of Spears--in her manner of dress, her music, her lifestyle...everything. She knows more about Spears' current tabloid run than I do--it makes me extremely uncomfortable to read things about people's private lives, especially at the level of the celebrity mags, because I have no way of parsing the truth from them.
So, granted, some of the things she was saying might have been true. If I'm to believe knowledgeable people about the subject, the magazines I despise the second-most (worst are the ones where all is smooth airbrushing, faux glamour, and polished prose), are in fact damnably accurate, due to potential litigation.
However, I don't believe that we can judge people themselves--especially not based on what publishers with vested interests in the subject try to tell us.
So I stopped her--rather abruptly--and said just that. And we changed the subject.
But this got me to thinking: this isn't the first time I've spoken up and asked people to change their conversation based on what I find offensive. Online, I just leave the conversation. I know it's counter-productive to try to protest--people just protest back. Loudly.
But in real life, I've been met with surprisingly good rates of success. The times that I can remember doing this have been times when I felt that just leaving wasn't an option. Most times, I've been in my own apartment. Many times, I've confronted people I didn't know particularly well, as well as people I knew very well.
So--would I annoy you? What would you do if you felt a conversation was damaging, hurtful, or wrong? I'm not talking about disagreeing with someone's viewpoints, exactly--more with the entire conversation, be that the tone of the comments, or the assumptions therein.
Because to me, there's a difference between saying, "I really hate the U.S.'s current policy and I think that Bush is an idiot for thinking that the War in Iraq was a good idea," and saying, "Bush is an idiot who deserves to be taken out and brutalized and then shot and then dragged through the streets."
If you really believe the latter, then you damn well better have justification for it, in my opinion.
Otherwise, I don't think hyperbole like that does anyone any good.
Opinions?
