I believe self reflection is a requirement for personal growth. I think its important to accept outside criticism to better one’s self as well.
I’ve read this text now probably 10 times, and trying to see if this applies to me. I can’t tell if I’m misinterpreting the message here or if I’m interpreting it right and what I do sometimes thinking is helpful actually isn’t. Is this reading comprehension failure on my part or a poorly encoded communication? I’m interested in your feedback positive or negative.
Many other people’s struggles are theoretical to me in the sense that I don’t experience them personally, but can certainly listen to those experiencing them and the negative effects on their lives, and many times how their challenges also mean all the rest of us not experiencing that problem also are less because of it.
Is the text in the image advocating that “because I don’t experience these firsthand, I should hold my tongue when I see/hear someone advocating for things that would cause these struggles to increase”? As an example: I have no problem casting a ballot in an election. I can get time off from work. My polling place is always safe and well staffed. There are early voting days for at least a week prior to election day including access in evening hours and weekends. I have easy transportation to and from it. No one is targeting me demographically to try to remove me from voter rolls. However, I understand in many places in the country my fellow citizens trying to vote don’t have this same situation and have challenges just being able to cast a ballot.
Is the above text telling me that I shouldn’t speak out against those trying to increase the difficulty of voting on behalf of those that are facing the challenges to vote just because I don’t experience it? I’m certainly not trying to take up all the oxygen, but am I doing that unintentionally? Is this text telling me to be quiet if I’m not personally affected by the particular challenge being discussed? I don’t think so, but whats the nuance I’m missing?
The meme is more targeting so-called “devil’s advocates” and people who argue from a position of extreme privilege. An example I can think of is people hand-waving away the existence of concentration camps and Democrats’ role in colonialist border policy, which is easy for someone to say who’s not imprisoned in those camps.
Or implying we need to compromise on LGBT+ equality, etc.
Does that sound like what you’re doing? I’m not seeing that sort of thing in your description.
It’s ok to be a vocal ally or supporter of a cause, but “devil’s advocates” usually don’t have anything worthwhile to contribute.
I do love doing devil’s advocate where it helps me and my friends understand our position when faced with these questions. But I’m definitely not playing it all the time.
I think it depends. When someone starts playing “devil’s advocate” with me about the US border when I literally have friends and loved ones being wrongfully imprisoned or deported, I’d say they get a negative score on the empathy meter.
Or people playing “devil’s advocate” about trans people in sports when they themselves are not trans, I’d say the same.
In fact, I can’t think of an example in which someone can play devil’s advocate without being so far removed from the topic at hand that they’d perhaps benefit from forestalling sharing their opinion, though I imagine between friends might be such a case, as you said.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what “Devil’s Advocate” means. It’s literally the argument of the “Devil”
The way I’ve always used it was to lay out the arguments of my opposition, to predict how they’d think so I could prepare counters accordingly.
If somebody is claiming to play devil’s advocate while voicing their own stances, they just know they have the wrong opinion on a topic and are trying to shield themselves from scorn.
I play devils advocate when people are talking about how to handle homeless population, taxes, etc., but if they try to debate human rights, I agree that they can f- off.
Yes, exactly, but we all have different solutions on how to deal with the underlying issue, or even what the underlying issue actually is. I take a different stance depending on the discussion with my friends so we can poke holes in the argument together and really understand the underlying issue together. That’s what devils advocate is really for.
I’m super progressive, so I think we should be having safe use sites, making all drugs legal. For the drugs that can kill from withdrawal, we should be supplying this at these safe use sites with the hopes of weaning them off. As for homes, we just don’t have enough. Get rid of these stupid parking lots in the cities that only ever have a dozen or so cars in them and just build subsidized housing.
You’re over-analyzing it. It’s a shitpost about people who shitpost about not voting for Biden and the people who shitpost in response to the not-vote-for-biden shitpost.
I don’t think it’s actually all that meta to the general users here. I think the population here is heavily skewed very left (even compared to reddit) and this is general sentiment, exaggerated into a meme.
Doubtful you are taking up all the oxygen in the room friend, you are trying to learn about others to cultivate a varied and nuanced opinion. The type of engagement being described here is more specific…
What happens a lot of the time is people coming on and basically trying to tell people what their deal is. I am trans and people in this category of engagement come at me and try to insist things directly to my face about me which simply do not reflect how being trans works. They can’t argue me out of my position when it represents my lived reality but they will argue from a position that they are an authority that can tell me what is best for me… Or they argue from a position of a society that just doesn’t have time or patience to care and shouldn’t need to expend effort to care. They desperately have an opinion because everyone is talking but they get their sources strictly from cis people who talk strictly to other cis people about us because talking to us and letting us tell them what our deal is ourselves is unthinkable. Our accounts if reality are discounted because we are supposed to be delusional and someone else, a cis person, should be making decisions for us. To actually approach us as an authority on what it is like to live our lives is by them considered a radical position.
A lot of it can be easily spotted in how someone had their whiteness pointed out to them or mention how the concept of whiteness operates in society. Basically because whiteness is supposed to be a default just mentioning it tends to make white people uncomfortable to talk about it. That we think about our whiteness as little as possible is a feature of privilege and not a comfort extended to POC who operate in ways that interface with their race regularly. So when we discuss that privilege it brings us in line with the level of conscious awareness POCs tend to have about how their race routinely impacts their experience and rather than seeing that as an equality and sensitivity to be aware of their own whiteness in a space people treat it as a racist attack because we aren’t supposed to even be a race - just a raceless default.
Problem is if trans or POC people talk about cisness or whiteness then suddenly there’s a hissy fit about how we shouldn’t even mention those things. They are treated like slurs because we aren’t supposed to notice you’re cis and white. It is the thing we cannot speak on… But try being a minority and NOT discussing the majority. Our we don’t get to choose how our society operates, the majority does which means every time we leave the house we deal with the majority while members of majority and the minority themselves only gets to see a minority rarely. Our lives are limited by the will of a majority and sometimes that means discomfort, inconvenience or pressure exerted on us by them. You can’t talk about us without understanding what you look like from our perspective. So in saying “you can’t talk about us!” the burden falls on us because we can’t really use comparison or try and utilize what we know of your norms to explain what ours are.
If you are self aware that people who experience a thing directly have insights you can learn from. This guy in the meme isn’t you.
Its funny that you are only sitting on a positive comment score because you prefaced your question with several paragraphs of self-flagellation, humbling yourself and accepting to being patronized
Is this text telling me to be quiet if I’m not personally affected by the particular challenge being discussed
It’s telling you that you must believe and acquiesce to those that have standpoint. So not “being quiet,” but actively swallowing whatever they throw at you as “truth” and following their political will
Its funny that you are only sitting on a positive comment score because you prefaced your question with several paragraphs of self-flagellation, humbling yourself and accepting to being patronized
Is an honest conversation that foreign to you? Are you suggesting I need to wrap myself in bravado instead for some reason? I’m pretty comfortable in who I am with both my strengths and weaknesses. I’d like to encourage everyone to get to the place where they can be too.
It’s telling you that you must believe and acquiesce to those that have standpoint. So not “being quiet,” but actively swallowing whatever they throw at you as “truth” and following their political will
Slow down there a bit. You’re deciding what I believe already when I hadn’t even yet. You rush too quickly to judgment, apparently of the message and of me. I understand why. Simple pre-decided narratives are comfortable. However, we do ourselves a disservice if we don’t test our values internally. If my values and beliefs stand the test of scrutiny, then they are defensible and valid . If they crumble when examined, then perhaps I need new values and beliefs.
The first step is to decode the message which was confusing to me. If you’ll notice, on my reading came away with two distinct possible messages, and allowed for any number of others. That doesn’t mean accepting its premise as fact or belief. It might later, but that isn’t decided when one is still seeking to understand the premise of what is being said.
In the end, the original message was a shitpost joke instead of something with deeper meaning that I thought it might be. So it was right of me to seek understanding of the original message, instead of a rush to judgment.
I believe self reflection is a requirement for personal growth. I think its important to accept outside criticism to better one’s self as well.
I’ve read this text now probably 10 times, and trying to see if this applies to me. I can’t tell if I’m misinterpreting the message here or if I’m interpreting it right and what I do sometimes thinking is helpful actually isn’t. Is this reading comprehension failure on my part or a poorly encoded communication? I’m interested in your feedback positive or negative.
Many other people’s struggles are theoretical to me in the sense that I don’t experience them personally, but can certainly listen to those experiencing them and the negative effects on their lives, and many times how their challenges also mean all the rest of us not experiencing that problem also are less because of it.
Is the text in the image advocating that “because I don’t experience these firsthand, I should hold my tongue when I see/hear someone advocating for things that would cause these struggles to increase”? As an example: I have no problem casting a ballot in an election. I can get time off from work. My polling place is always safe and well staffed. There are early voting days for at least a week prior to election day including access in evening hours and weekends. I have easy transportation to and from it. No one is targeting me demographically to try to remove me from voter rolls. However, I understand in many places in the country my fellow citizens trying to vote don’t have this same situation and have challenges just being able to cast a ballot.
Is the above text telling me that I shouldn’t speak out against those trying to increase the difficulty of voting on behalf of those that are facing the challenges to vote just because I don’t experience it? I’m certainly not trying to take up all the oxygen, but am I doing that unintentionally? Is this text telling me to be quiet if I’m not personally affected by the particular challenge being discussed? I don’t think so, but whats the nuance I’m missing?
The meme is more targeting so-called “devil’s advocates” and people who argue from a position of extreme privilege. An example I can think of is people hand-waving away the existence of concentration camps and Democrats’ role in colonialist border policy, which is easy for someone to say who’s not imprisoned in those camps.
Or implying we need to compromise on LGBT+ equality, etc.
Does that sound like what you’re doing? I’m not seeing that sort of thing in your description.
It’s ok to be a vocal ally or supporter of a cause, but “devil’s advocates” usually don’t have anything worthwhile to contribute.
Aka the “just asking questions” crowd.
JAQ-offs if you will.
Yes! So good.
I do love doing devil’s advocate where it helps me and my friends understand our position when faced with these questions. But I’m definitely not playing it all the time.
I think it depends. When someone starts playing “devil’s advocate” with me about the US border when I literally have friends and loved ones being wrongfully imprisoned or deported, I’d say they get a negative score on the empathy meter.
Or people playing “devil’s advocate” about trans people in sports when they themselves are not trans, I’d say the same.
In fact, I can’t think of an example in which someone can play devil’s advocate without being so far removed from the topic at hand that they’d perhaps benefit from forestalling sharing their opinion, though I imagine between friends might be such a case, as you said.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what “Devil’s Advocate” means. It’s literally the argument of the “Devil”
The way I’ve always used it was to lay out the arguments of my opposition, to predict how they’d think so I could prepare counters accordingly.
If somebody is claiming to play devil’s advocate while voicing their own stances, they just know they have the wrong opinion on a topic and are trying to shield themselves from scorn.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/devil-s-advocate
You used it correctly.
This very thing, but I’m not so sure they know their position is wrong per se. They just know they won’t be able to defend it.
I play devils advocate when people are talking about how to handle homeless population, taxes, etc., but if they try to debate human rights, I agree that they can f- off.
Homeless population debates are about human rights. People who dehumanize the homeless or NIMBYs who want them displaced are horrible people.
Yes, exactly, but we all have different solutions on how to deal with the underlying issue, or even what the underlying issue actually is. I take a different stance depending on the discussion with my friends so we can poke holes in the argument together and really understand the underlying issue together. That’s what devils advocate is really for.
I’m super progressive, so I think we should be having safe use sites, making all drugs legal. For the drugs that can kill from withdrawal, we should be supplying this at these safe use sites with the hopes of weaning them off. As for homes, we just don’t have enough. Get rid of these stupid parking lots in the cities that only ever have a dozen or so cars in them and just build subsidized housing.
You’re over-analyzing it. It’s a shitpost about people who shitpost about not voting for Biden and the people who shitpost in response to the not-vote-for-biden shitpost.
Unless you were shitposting; bravo if so sir.
So an inside-inside joke? Too meta for me, I guess. It went over my head. Thanks for responding though.
Sadly, I’m not that clever.
I don’t think it’s actually all that meta to the general users here. I think the population here is heavily skewed very left (even compared to reddit) and this is general sentiment, exaggerated into a meme.
OP is just saying people who disagree with them are bad. You can’t figure out the meaning because there is none.
Doubtful you are taking up all the oxygen in the room friend, you are trying to learn about others to cultivate a varied and nuanced opinion. The type of engagement being described here is more specific…
What happens a lot of the time is people coming on and basically trying to tell people what their deal is. I am trans and people in this category of engagement come at me and try to insist things directly to my face about me which simply do not reflect how being trans works. They can’t argue me out of my position when it represents my lived reality but they will argue from a position that they are an authority that can tell me what is best for me… Or they argue from a position of a society that just doesn’t have time or patience to care and shouldn’t need to expend effort to care. They desperately have an opinion because everyone is talking but they get their sources strictly from cis people who talk strictly to other cis people about us because talking to us and letting us tell them what our deal is ourselves is unthinkable. Our accounts if reality are discounted because we are supposed to be delusional and someone else, a cis person, should be making decisions for us. To actually approach us as an authority on what it is like to live our lives is by them considered a radical position.
A lot of it can be easily spotted in how someone had their whiteness pointed out to them or mention how the concept of whiteness operates in society. Basically because whiteness is supposed to be a default just mentioning it tends to make white people uncomfortable to talk about it. That we think about our whiteness as little as possible is a feature of privilege and not a comfort extended to POC who operate in ways that interface with their race regularly. So when we discuss that privilege it brings us in line with the level of conscious awareness POCs tend to have about how their race routinely impacts their experience and rather than seeing that as an equality and sensitivity to be aware of their own whiteness in a space people treat it as a racist attack because we aren’t supposed to even be a race - just a raceless default.
Problem is if trans or POC people talk about cisness or whiteness then suddenly there’s a hissy fit about how we shouldn’t even mention those things. They are treated like slurs because we aren’t supposed to notice you’re cis and white. It is the thing we cannot speak on… But try being a minority and NOT discussing the majority. Our we don’t get to choose how our society operates, the majority does which means every time we leave the house we deal with the majority while members of majority and the minority themselves only gets to see a minority rarely. Our lives are limited by the will of a majority and sometimes that means discomfort, inconvenience or pressure exerted on us by them. You can’t talk about us without understanding what you look like from our perspective. So in saying “you can’t talk about us!” the burden falls on us because we can’t really use comparison or try and utilize what we know of your norms to explain what ours are.
If you are self aware that people who experience a thing directly have insights you can learn from. This guy in the meme isn’t you.
Its funny that you are only sitting on a positive comment score because you prefaced your question with several paragraphs of self-flagellation, humbling yourself and accepting to being patronized
It’s telling you that you must believe and acquiesce to those that have standpoint. So not “being quiet,” but actively swallowing whatever they throw at you as “truth” and following their political will
Is an honest conversation that foreign to you? Are you suggesting I need to wrap myself in bravado instead for some reason? I’m pretty comfortable in who I am with both my strengths and weaknesses. I’d like to encourage everyone to get to the place where they can be too.
Slow down there a bit. You’re deciding what I believe already when I hadn’t even yet. You rush too quickly to judgment, apparently of the message and of me. I understand why. Simple pre-decided narratives are comfortable. However, we do ourselves a disservice if we don’t test our values internally. If my values and beliefs stand the test of scrutiny, then they are defensible and valid . If they crumble when examined, then perhaps I need new values and beliefs.
The first step is to decode the message which was confusing to me. If you’ll notice, on my reading came away with two distinct possible messages, and allowed for any number of others. That doesn’t mean accepting its premise as fact or belief. It might later, but that isn’t decided when one is still seeking to understand the premise of what is being said.
In the end, the original message was a shitpost joke instead of something with deeper meaning that I thought it might be. So it was right of me to seek understanding of the original message, instead of a rush to judgment.