Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Butthurt Nation

     I recently posted a rant on the Book Of Face* over an instance of butthurtedness I found particularly egregious.  It happened to be a modified video test signal that included a little moving figure with an arm raised that is called -- and vaguely resembles -- a "wizard."  One of the commenters took it as "promotion of witchcraft" in a very much see-what-They-are-up-to-now way  (As far as I know, it's not -- you need moving object with some pointiness to reveal some kinds of flaws in high-definition video and most of the options carry unfortunate connotations.)

     In and of itself, it was Just Another Day On The Intertubes, but it points to a growing culture of childishly-self-aggrandizing paranoia: whatever you (or, worse yet, "They," which would be any large endeavor of any sort) say or do, no matter how innocent, someone, somewhere, is going to take it as an attack on something they hold dear and believe to be under threat.  It is a mindset in which anything, from choice of liquid refreshment to use of electronic test signals, is recast as move in an ongoing ideological struggle.

     At one time, we knew a cigar is sometimes -- most times -- just a cigar.  We used to have more common sense -- or, if you're paranoid enough, we used to be blinkered dupes. We used to understand that most entities aren't waging semi-covert war but merely trying to promote some product or service, however irksome or unnecessary it might be. (Do my teeth really need to reflect UV light? Isn't it enough that they are clean and healthy?)  We used to understand that if someone or some group was out to gore our ox, they'd generally make that well known, rather than resorting to covert stabs in the back. (Or if they were working in secret, they strove to keep it secret rather than proffering barely-hooded jibes and dogwhistles.)

     We used to suffer way less butthurt -- and we knew that most of it was self-inflicted.

     All good things must come to an end, I suppose.  Heck, isn't that just the way They planned it all along?
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* If the newer, faster, hipper social media are the Death Of Blogging as is so often reported, it's the Death Of A Thousand Idiots: not just quicker, shorter and hipper, but dumber, too.  It's Internet For The Barely Literate and I guess we shouldn't be surprised.  Hello, Mr. Gresham -- how's the old law practice these days? It's not just the money, isn't it?

    

9 comments:

Blackwing1 said...

And no joke in there about a "tempest OVER a teapot"?

How's the Z-pack doing in its triumph (hopefully) over the infection?

Anonymous said...

In fairness, we know a bit more than we might have done years ago when our sole source of info was the town newspaper (or, at least, we have access to more info).

As a result, we KNOW that the government has exposed people to diseases, radiation, chemical weapons, etc. without their knowledge or consent.(1) We KNOW that members of Congress take bribes.(2) We KNOW that reporters sometimes falsify stories.(3)

Now, you're quite right: not everything is a deliberate effort of Them to get Us (or even Me). Never ascribe to malice what may be explained by stupidity...

Still...


=====

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_United_States#Surgical_experiments

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Trafficant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Cunningham

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Plagiarism_and_fabrication_scandal

Roberta X said...

Docjim505: you have missed my point. That covert stuff was *kept* *covert.* It wasn't subtly signaled. And it was eventually hauled into the light.

It's this business of reading way too much into things that is symptomatic of ijit butthurt, as if people took the "Hitler" teapot as evidence of a Nazi agenda on the part of the retailer. --And you know somebody did, to a chorus of "Yeah!" from their buddies.

Anonymous said...

Roberta X - Ah, I see your point. I usually do... eventually!

LCB said...

I think this is sort of related to your point.

Back in the late 70's and early 80's a "christian" comedian named Mike Warnke hit the, uh, church scene in a big way. He told everyone he was a former warlock of the satanic church. He said Rush was a satanic band because of the red star on the cover of 2112, and he swore his covens listened to the music during their child sacrifices.(Yeah, you read that right.)

He also claimed that Halloween was a satanic plot to induce kids into getting in to witchcraft.

I was a late teen back then, and I have to admit I bought his story. Churches everywhere got "butthurt" about rock music in general, Rush specifically, and told their flock that it was of the devil to participate in Halloween. Some churches had Harvest parties and encouraged their kids to dress up as bible characters. Heck, churches are still doing this, but not like I saw back in the late 70's.

And Warnke's story was all BS. He had made it all up and was exposed by Cornerstone magazine.

Anyway, the churches all bought in to it without doing any investigation or logical thinking. And I learned to not believe crap spewed by anyone unless I could verify it.

pax said...

It is a mindset in which anything, from choice of liquid refreshment to use of electrrontic test signals is recast as move in an ongoing ideological struggle.

Yes. This.

Posted a blurb on my Fb feed saying that parents should make sure their kids know what an unloaded, can't-fire gun looks and sounds like, since during an active shooter event it often happens that the best time to run away or attack the bad guy happens when the bad guy needs to reload. This was sparked by eyewitness testimony from the latest shooting at a school near Seattle, where at least one young man chose to run away during the brief time the bad guy's gun wasn't working.

Several people reacted to the suggestion by saying that these stories only get circulated to support magazine capacity limits.

But even if that were the case? I'm pretty sure that's not why the survivors say them.

RandyGC said...

I've found that such kerflumples tell me more about the pathologies Righteously Aggrieved Party than it does about the motives of supposed perpetrator.

Old NFO said...

PCism run amok (again)...

Jeffrey Smith said...

Thinks of all those download/install/extract and compress/backup/general everything else wizards to be found in Windows. Obvious evidence that Microsoft is satanic and Bill Gates is the Antichrist.