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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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I mean the firing bothers me for example and I've been against OK-sign policing since the issue began, and I was part of the vehement "let's tone it down" camp in the HD case -- but stakes and the amount of consequences do matter. As the OP alludes to, I think part of the reason I'm not as outraged here is the job of "Olympic official" feels like a low-impact part-time job rather than something more extensive. Also, there's kind of an expectation for some PR bullshittery that comes along with the Olympics. I don't really expect them to be super fair on the fringes. If, for example, articles were to come out saying the official had been totally blackballed from everything in their sport, or lost tons of money, or something along those lines I would feel more strongly! As far as I know most officials for this type of thing are somewhat well-off hobbyists from a wide variety of countries. The Home Depot case however was someone who is often living paycheck to paycheck and has to deal with a lot of crap already in their job, and furthermore I know firsthand a lot of people in similar positions. That's a significant contrast. Moreover I don't even have a strong sense for who is running the IOC in the first place, so seeing it as part of some larger and uniquely Western cancel war isn't immediately obvious to me.

so it's all about who/whom and not about principles.

That's not what I said. There's principles, but we're talking about the context of people making a big fuss on Twitter. Making a big fuss on Twitter requires more than one's principles being breached, it requires some degree of outrage. I'm just saying that many of these "peaceniks" do continue to in good faith call for a ceasefire, but they may be understandably less motivated to loudly call for a ceasefire in this case.

The highly-upvoted post I responded to is alleging a double standard where none actually exists. It's also doubly frustrating that at least on its face, their post seemed to ask (really, allege, but hiding behind an insincere question) about where is the outrage and use that as evidence of a double standard. I provided a literal and direct answer to their question (i.e. people probably still are consistent but the "outrage"/"demonstrated harm" dial isn't very high here) and was downvoted for answering that very question. Guess people writ large aren't actually all that interested in other perspectives after all, it seems. They just want their echo chamber. Do better, Mottizens.

Like, did you read my comment? Read it again. I'm saying that most people see the news and see "rich international hobbyist loses a part time gig after political overreaction" and obviously that's a different level of harm and thus outrage as "poor working-class person gets fired from their minimum wage job due to online crusade". The difference is pretty obvious?!? Of course people are going to be louder about the second case! No one gives two shits about often faceless "Olympic Officials". Hell, no one gives a shit about the jobs of refs in practically any sport!!! So expecting a twitterstorm of outrage as "proof" people are being morally consistent seems misguided at best.

I fail to see any meaningful clarification in your post. All I got away from it was the dynamic who/whom laundered through a context/harm relabeling.

"It's not that he was bad, but that there was more harm/the context is different in this occasion".

As I understood it, the whole point of acting principled/having principles was that it didn't matter the who/whom of the equation, just that the situation "activated" the relevant principle, guarantying a level of impartiality and bias avoidance which conferred a certain moral high ground.

Do better, Mottizens.

This isn't X Dawg, we don't do shaming here.

Seriously? People speaking up on media is directly proportional to outrage, not principles. That doesn’t mean you can conclude “I don’t see social media outrage, thus there must be no principles”. This is so obvious I’m confused why I have to say this out loud.