So for those who are out of the loop, r/ActualPublicFreakouts formed from the frustration of non-public freakouts were becoming more common on the original subreddit. As of late there has become a more noticeable shift in what types of posts get to the top of the pages. I've also seen comments in passing the past few months accusing r/ActualPublicFreakouts being full of racist nazis in other subreddits.
The question is how long before a move to censor or outright ban the spin off subreddit since the political and cultural shift goes against the Reddit group think.
If you frequented the place, you'd probably end up more racist for it because of the commonality of "WORLD STAR" type antics in the black community that makes up a huge amount of the internet's public freakout material. Unless you curate it it heavily to avoid such a thing..
I did frequent the place, and no, you don't "end up" racist. You choose to be racist. This is an argument I've been making to feminists for years now too. Just because you see a person doing a bad thing, even if a bad thing happens to you from some type of person, it still doesn't mean that you get to slander an entire population.
Yes, even if your boyfriend rapes you, the fact that you can't ever bring yourself to trust any men ever again is your personal failure. The fact that you can't accept that men aren't inherently bad is problem you'll have to work your way out of to overcome. The idea that women are inherently better than men because they commit less rapes is an act of supremacism, and again, a personal failure because you're a bigot. You chose an easy solution to be a bigot to make yourself feel safe, when all it's going to do is hurt you in the long run.
You watch some thugs do stupid shit before they die of their fentanyl overdose in a few years. Deciding that you think all black people can't be trusted because you spent too much time on Reddit is a personal failure. You didn't get "made" into a racist in the same way video games didn't "make" you into a serial killer.
"... but it's like when a dog bites you and..."
I don't care. I got bit by my own dog once. I got over it. I didn't decide that owning or liking dogs makes someone morally inferior. I didn't decide that I'm smarter, more woke, or have better pattern recognition than anyone who doesn't hate dogs.
I have the ability to understand the concept of the fallacy of generalization.
You mean the thousands of samples that identify men as the primary antagonists of all violent crime on Earth?
Yes. And of men, which type is the most represented in violent crime?
You can't not have experience with men. Every feminist has met and dealt with men for their entire life, except in extremely rare cases.
You can however, have little to zero experience with black people. Or any race even. Which makes having your only exposure to them be a constant bombardment of negative actions taint your view.
Do note that I said "end up more racist", which is not "being racist." There are levels you see, a spectrum even. If you start at neutral and this information makes you think slightly negative about the group, that's what I was going for. You don't just see a video and go "WHELP TIME TO UNLOAD MY NINE IN THE WELFARE LINE AND COMMIT GENOCIDE." That's a choice of extremity.
Either way, you've beaten the shit out of the strawman's arguments preemptively, so good on you.
Oh, I never accused you of making that argument. I just hate the argument, and I see it a lot.
I'll go even further, there are genuine racists that intentionally try to push people into accepting a racialist narrative because they are flooded with negative imagery and an affirming narrative. This is literally the purpose of "EVERY. SINGLE. TIME."
Generalizations and stereotypes have value. Your brain must start from somewhere. It persists because it is useful. Germans have things in common with each other. Arabs have a cultural consensus on some values.
Racism isn't making generalizations about groups of people; it is failing to adjust from that position when you encounter from an individual.
These are generalizations:
Not only are all of them wrong, none of them are helpful as a place to start to form a judgement, being a gross oversimplification of something that is as complex as a thumbnail sketch of the common values of a culture.
You seem to be bent out of shape that watching PublicFreakouts would adjust the view of certain groups to being significantly more negative. Perhaps you are right, but that isn't "choosing to be racist".
Admittedly, it might start your perceptions of certain individuals from a cynical and jaundiced place; but that is different from it being factually wrong; or as you seem to think, immoral.
Personally, I think that putting all people with dark skin in a single bucket marked "black" is fucking stupid. A person (black or white) raised in an inner city ghetto isn't the same as a person (black or white) raised in a rural country town, or even a decent suburb.
And I don't know if you are aware but in other nations, broad cultural groups are not color coded for your convenience. Europe basically doesn't have black people, and if you meet one the color of their skin won't much help you to make a judgement on their cultural origin. A Berber has almost nothing in common with a British born person with a dark skin or a swarthy Spaniard.
Well, that's where taxonomic hair-splitting below species level comes in. Below that is race/subspecies, of course, and then below THAT comes in behavioural differences within a race (called "ethnicity" in humans, or tribes). A black American is definitely of a different ethnicity than someone from Nigeria (or Australia, for that matter) even though they might share a more recent common ancestor with each other than with any other groups of humans, and the black American might seem behaviourally "white" in the Nigerian's eyes.
Yeah, this happens in other species as well, but it's not talked about much. We just mostly get the kindergarten view of evolution, as being caused by "random changes" caused by "geological separation" (mountains and oceans) on the timescale of geology, rather than biology. But, as Darwin noted, intra-species competition is probably more important than any other kind of pressure exerted on a species (ie, its social condition puts more evolutionary pressure on a population than predators, disease, climate, etc.) A change in behaviour might turn some off, and attract some, within a population, and then, when the two different groups grow so big and can't stand living with one another any more, migration happens. Like a guy named Abraham taking his family and like-minded sky-god worhshipping monotheistic friends across the desert to get away from people who were polytheists. The problem comes when an animal has no more room to spread and for new populations to claim new territory ...
And do note that domestication experiments indicate that changes in behaviour patterns are often accompanied by changes in appearance (eye and hair colour, for instance.)
I'm bent out of shape about the claim that people are "forced" to become racist, or are "made" into racists. No, they choose to be racist based on their own personal failure.
Agreed, that cynical (and more often than not, resentful) place to hold a demographic in contempt for the alleged crimes of their race is immoral to me.
Agreed, the black and white racial construct is quite broad to the point of being generally useless for many pratical purposes. It's political identification, like Hispanic.
I'm well aware of that.
I'm bent out of shape on the stupidity of the argument that "I think we should deport blacks out of America because I watched too many YouTube videos. I have literally no agency or ability to reason, so therefore I became racist because YouTube made me recognize-patterns/fall-down-the-alt-right-pipeline."
It's a stupid argument and I hate it.
I absolutely do think it's immoral because the perspective is factually wrong most of the time because it is a misapplication of statistics fueled by a personal emotional failure in the form of resentment and distrust.
I'm already doing the 'what about a man walking down the street' scenario with someone else, so I'll use that point here. I hope you understand how utterly useless racial generalizations are to the point that they have to be dropped immediately given any change in behavior.
If I see a woman walking down the street, and I'm relying on gender based generalizations, then I assume she's not a threat. The moment she reaches into her pocket, she becomes a more likely threat. More likely of a threat than a man who doesn't.
It effectively becomes even less useful than "what are they wearing?" If you look poor and disheveled, most people will see you as more of a threat. If the generalization has less utility than the fact that you are wearing a tie or high-heels, then it serves almost effectively zero purpose.
More than well aware, and I often have to explain it to people.