I’m sure we’ve done this before, but why is the world so keen to be outraged? Today’s news features “outrage” at a comment by Chris Boardman and a (perhaps ill-advised bu surely not intentionally offensive) tweet by Ellen Degeneres. Links below:
Desperate to be outraged
by 38 Comments
Oops sorry. IT skills found wanting: Links here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-37107541
http://metro.co.uk/2016/08/16/bbc-commentator-chris-boardman-sparks-outrage-with-sexist-whats-for-tea-remark-towards-laura-trott-6072770/
Indeed.
It’s madness.
I’d like to think of it that he was getting at the idea that Trott is very emotional, and Kenny is the almost complete opposite, utterly practical and unflappable?
And while I’m on, why do people’s copied and pasted tweets have to feature in a news article? What happened to journalism?
The Daily Mail (et al) happened to journalism. See also FURY and SLAMMED.
In my more jaundiced moments it amuses me to think of all those bright-as-a-button young journalism hopefuls spending their days copying and pasting tweets and Instagram photos of Kim Kardashian’s bum.
You missed STORM! It’s down to lazy journalism, the Daily Mail’s hacks seem to do all their reports with one eye on Twitter.
Half a dozen Twatters get offended and that’s an OUTRAGE (forgot that one).
See also HILARIOUS (a story has been lifted from Reddit and passed off as an internet sensation) and BAFFLED (an optical illusion or picture puzzle has been lifted from Reddit and passed off as an internet sensation).
Absolutely. You’ve probably read it, but Nick Davies’s “Flat Earth News”is excellent on just this topic.
Firstly social media means that views that would otherwise go no further than the pub, the living room, or inside our heads, are out out there. This validates others to recycle the same opinions. And then whole newspaper articles are written purely based on those few people’s tweets. Hers a typical example:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/work/laura-trott-whats-for-tea-bbc-commentary-sparks-sexism-storm/
There was no ‘sexism Storm’ but it suits the increasingly desperate media to take a few tweets as evidence of outrage and controversy.
But of course none of this resembles real life. Plenty of people were talking in my workplace today about Laura Trott and Jason Kennt, but not one mentioned, or I suspect had even thought about Chris Boardman’s slightly clumsy but obviously light hearted comment (which I interpreted in exactly the same way as Bobness).
It’s all just froth.
DeGeneres has no case to answer whatsoever. Those who are trying to make something of it should be offered an early opportunity to fuck the fuck off.
Boardman was a a bit of a twat to say what he said on live TV in 2016. Brain not fully engaged, no doubt.
Having said that, the “media storm” surrounding it is completely out of proportion.
The Age Of Clickbait Journalism.
People are queuing up to get offended by all kinds of things. From both sides of politics.
http://i.imgur.com/Tk3BbWA.jpg
seriously how old in tha picture of Stephen Fry? He looks uncannily like Richard Madeley in it. Now there’s a c**t who is offensive
People often seem to confuse being offended with being upset. Being upset is something is hard to do anything about and broadcasters should try and avoid causing it. Being offended is the problem of the offended and normally seems to indicate a closed mind.
Highlighting that one comment robs it of context. I heard the whole commentary and one of its themes was the difference between the two personalities – she the more excitable (and marketable) while he is more passive and calm. This was Boardman’s admittedly clumsy attempt to sum up the difference.
I don’t use social media and I thank god it wasn’t around when I was younger. I was a thoughtless smartarse and would probably have got into all sorts of trouble.
Outrage or offence, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder .
For me, one comment was a lighthearted comment on getting around more quickly.
Do I understand why some might find the image unappealing? Yes.
For me, Sir Chris H’s remark was deeply silly at best. Textbook unthinking sexism at worst.
A clunky note at a golden moment in either case.
The subjective is all we have.
Navigating subjectivity is our greatest challenge.
Hell is other people.
Social media has a lot to do with this increase in people seeking out things to be outraged by. People who are desperate for attention can always harvest a forest of ‘likes’ if they claim to be outraged or offended by some brutish lout whose words or deeds they innocently stumbled upon online.
If you can’t offer anything constructive or witty, and you don’t want to post pictures of cats or children, how do you reap those tiny ticks of love out of your long-suffering friends? Easy- be offended! It’s brilliant – it simultaneously demonstrates your moral superiority while making you the injured party. The friends’ support for your victimhood implies tacit opposition to the cause – so it appears that ‘we’ are offended by a photo of a white woman on a black man’s back, when it’s really only a show of sympathy for the offence-taker’s fake trauma.
Agree with all of the above, however in a civilised society there is also a responsibility to not exercise your “right to offend” at every opportunity. It’s ignorant and boorish and should periodically be met by a Prescottian response from someone exercising their right to give mouthy wankers a biff on the nose.
There seems to me, a big difference between inadvertently offending someone desperate to be offended (either on their or others behalf) and picking a target and deliberately trying to offend. Either way, violence isn’t the answer.
There’s a middle ground of bad mannered mouthyness which is annoying for the mass which is unacceptable in civilised society. The biff was a little joke, as I am sure you realise.
Didn’t realise it was a joke but my post was a bit high and mighty. It is a problem that there are people that think they do have a right to hit someone that offends them.
Agree that is not on.
Has definitely been posted here before but the comedian Steve Hughes is good on this
Excellent. He’s the bloke who was in some Aussie death metal combo, wasn’t he? (or something like that)
I saw him support Bill Bailey once. Very amusing evening.
What concerns me is that people feel it’s appropriate to batter someone on Twitter who quite recently had a bereavement reported in the news.
Yes, his mother died in a cycling accident and he is singled out for something that was not really offensive at all. I heard the commentary and it wasn’t really sexist in the slightest.
Don’t get me started on ‘offence-by-proxy’. “I’m not personally offended by your comment but I think I might know someone who might be.”
Bizarrely, someone being offended on my behalf would really annoy me – almost to the pojnt of me being offended (but not quite ). Christ, we’re down the rabbit hole now, aren’t we?
A few generations of lib/left snowflakes nurtured first in the Blair era and then beyond have now taken deep root in our society with their philosophy of self entitlement and ‘me first’ that has polluted the halls of learning and rendered democracy and freedom of speech a one way deal eg their worldview, not yours. To differ in opinion usually generates all sorts of ludicrous frenzied accusations and insults, and yet they keep polishing their self imagined bullshit halos and harping on about the ‘hate’ of others. Utterly delusional cretinous hypocrites. Fuck ’em.
Peace & Love.
Right on, brother!
As mentioned above by Chiz, there’s also the desperate seeking after ‘victimhood’ which then leads to demand for ‘safe spaces’ and ‘no platforms’ so that the little dears don’t have to be subjected to the views of others that dare to disagree with theirs.
High Five Iandude. Victimhood is the comfy en suite refuge of these selfish idiots. We live, all in all, in one of the greatest and most successful countries re these matters of equality etc and yet, the group self hate ego bleating wankery continues. Nothing is ever perfect. How can it be ? A continuing work in clear minded balanced progress one would hope is always the key and we’re good at it, all in all, and with good intentions but sometimes naive ones, but things are still pretty good here. Bigots of all political hue are part of life. Deal with it, and perhaps, if not, they should reflect on how well that shit in some other less amenable eg undemocratic countries/societies would go down and then see how far they’d get.
OM
ps: who’s this Edith chick ?
Yours
Mildly Miffed and Slightly Spannered Of Nether Snurtle
Yes, yes as with everything it’s the lefts fault. Of course these right wing columnists never stir things up or never shut up about how their freedom of speech is being diminished while racking in thousands of pounds writing columns about how people like them aren’t allowed to say anything anymore.
It must be tough be outraged for money every single week.
Well of course columnists of either political persuasion milk it. It’s a nice earner. I’m talking about the free hugs brigade and their ilk, plus attention seeking middle aged celebs, well off Guardianistas and fossilised old school Trot types. The problem I have with them is that opposed to those on the centre right (I’m neither) they have a particular spectacular capacity for utterly deluded hypocritical holier than thou self belief, banging on about freedom, equality etc, all fine and noble things, but then screeching, frothing and hurling insults totally out of proportion to rationality, and that’s why it’s almost impossible to have a fair balanced discussion with most of them. They purport to hold the moral higher ground, but think nothing of charging down from it in a teeth bared frenzy. They’ll also quite happily say the most horrible public media comments of the string ’em up type regardless of any normal humane standards of decency. Of course you get equally hypocritical and abhorrent behaviour and discourse from dunderheads on the right too, usually the far right plus a few Daily Heil morons, but it does seem to be more of a general mindset and default thought pattern of far more of those to the left. Let’s face it, it’s goes along with the deeper belief about egg genocide in order to achieve the fairy tale perfect omelette, and all that bollocks.
Of course we all know that The Right would never ever dream of looking for things to be offended by..
Well of course they do. My point is the higher level of hypocrisy amongst a large element of the left who are self appointedly apparently morally superior but think nothing of the ‘tory = vermin scum’ mantra. It’s almost a litany. That’s what I have an issue with. They bang on about ‘hate’ but are quite happy to revert to that. I’m old enough and relatively wise enough to know that that is judgemental, deluded reductionist bollox. Hardly the moral position. There are many good people left/right. They just have a different political/social/economic viewpoint, but it’s that large element on the left. Hypocrisy. I saw so much truly hateful comments when I was on fb directed at Tories of any sort by the left who in their second breath would literally trumpet blast their own almost saintly superiority.
No argument now except with your use of “higher” as opposed to “high” regarding hypocrisy, as I feel that’s just your right-leaning opinion.
My lefter-than-yours opinion is that the level of hypocrisy is pretty much equal on all sides.
I’m pretty centre neutral, but I tend more to the Churchill view that democracy is the best of a bad bunch. There isn’t a political philosophy yet that I could honestly enthusiastically get fully behind. The difference is that those on the right tend who are intelligent tend to be usually far more pragmatic in this regard, whilst many of those on the left far too often have the whiff of the zealot about them, and I don’t do zealotry in any form.
Anyway, you know my view re Goddess worship, agrarianism and the rise of city states 😉
Let’s walk through the steps here* –
1. I have the right not to be offended.
2. Therefore everybody else in the country has the same right (I can’t claim a right without extending it to others).
3. Someone else says that something I said offends them.
4. Therefore I have to retract it and never repeat it.
5. Well done me – I’ve just managed to eliminate freedom of speech!
*I’m mansplaining! I’m being offensive!
That Stephen Fry quote annoys me, because (in the days when he was on Twitter) he was the first to be absolutely OUTRAGED if anything offended him.
Chris Boardman obviously meant his comment as @Bobness said, but I bet he cringed inwardly as soon as it left his lips. That’s live TV I guess. No big deal.
So, Jim, does it offend you that Stephen Fry appears to have ceased publicly taking offence?