Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

actually there are three specific discourses that I mentioned:

1) the martin shkreli article

Christie Smythe covered white-collar crime for Bloomberg News and lived "the perfect little Brooklyn life" with her husband. Then she threw it all away for one of her sources: infamous pharma bro Martin Shkreli. https://t.co/Xk0zXmYkgF

— ELLE Magazine (US) (@ELLEmagazine) December 20, 2020

Know what else I see every single day working at the grocery store? I'm gonna get a ton of shit for this but it's true. $40 birthday cakes, $60 worth of crab legs on EBT cards.

— Maura-y Christmas 😷💪🇺🇸 🌊 🌈 ❄️🙋‍♀️🎶♊ (@mrose1965) December 19, 2020

AITA for telling my son to grow up and accept the consequences of his choice to snitch on his friends? https://t.co/4FrPBru6CJ pic.twitter.com/QZ0c2NPY10

— Am I the Asshole? (@AITA_reddit) December 19, 2020

Is there a reason we should pay attention to any of these, let alone derive our morality from them?

I know the use of “the discourse” on Twitter - it’s ironic, highlighting that your timeline is not real life and that Twitter arguments don’t matter.

My personal point of view is that "someone said something dumb on the internet" is the least topic to which we should give any credence.

many of these are people whom I either know in real life or that I have mutual acquaintances with, and of the ones who aren't, almost all of them are, in fact, real people, who exist in real life, whom I could well encounter

many of them are people you know in real life, too!

The Shkreli story is a human interest oddity, nothing more. You don’t need to have an opinion on his girlfriend or her choices. It’s a frivolity.

But accepting that you do care, what is the ping pong consensus that traps you on the wrong side of history?

what happens if one just does not look at twitter

also it's very disingenuous to claim you don't know what this is or engage in it when some person was just screenshotted upthread. would you say that this person was doing something wrong and should have done something different? OK, then you both know what this is and engage in it

I don't know if that was aimed at me for asking what The Discourse was - I reloaded the entire thread which is huge and took ages, and the only screenshot I could see was about someone going to Mass? Is that what you meant? So, the answer to my question 'is it Twitter' is ... yes?

I mean, I'm not lying, I am still none the wiser. But I guess you are free to not believe me. I'm not really good at trying to analyse statements or summaries I'm only able to guess at, so I'll leave it there.

xp, oh ok. I have no idea what to make of that crab legs tweet or how it has any bearing on how I travel or stay home this Christmas.

But accepting that you do care, what is the ping pong consensus that traps you on the wrong side of history?

― Joe Biden Stan Account (milo z), Monday, December 21, 2020 7:00 PM (fifty-three seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

for the millionth time, it is "it is wrong to shame people for their personal choices, when the government's response for the pandemic is what is causing harm" vs. "it is wrong to travel/shop/_____ during a pandemic, the context doesn't matter, and people who do so deserve to be shamed for it"

Well, what’s your take on it? What if the discursive consensus expects you to have an opinion of your own on this issue because it can’t resolve its own self-contradictory nature without your help?

But the 2nd statement seems disingenuously extreme, probably a more realistic version is "try your best to prioritize your safety and the safety of others."

xp

Of course that makes a shitty hot take

If anyone is saying it's wrong to shop during a pandemic then I was a bad boy today but it was either that or starve.

That has nothing to do with the “Shkreli discourse.”

Nevertheless, those two statements aren’t necessarily contradictory.

Well, what’s your take on it? What if the discursive consensus expects you to have an opinion of your own on this issue because it can’t resolve its own self-contradictory nature without your help?

― pomenitul, Monday, December 21, 2020 7:06 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't fucking know what my take is, and I do know that I am expected to have an opinion on my own, and that's the whole problem

as for the examples upthread I just mentioned them as examples of other new rules enacted or reiterated

Framing moral imperatives in a format that will maximize twitter likes is probably going to produce something less than optimal that might be best to ignore.

Who is expecting you to have an opinion? It's perfectly fine not to have an opinion.

Katherine, we're all on our own out here. You seem to be an intelligent, sensitive person, and presuming you are an adult and now fully individuated you have developed your own moral compass. Use it. Find your center. Listen to your heart, etc. It sounds, again, like you are caught in some kind of trap, and people itt are trying to tell you it's a maze of your own making.

What if you were to go with ‘I don’t know what my take is exactly because I don’t have enough information to make a call here – and that’s my take’?

well, for one, all of you are expecting me to have an opinion, so there's that. and then when a statement is framed as a moral imperative, or when somebody is shamed for doing the wrong thing, implicit in that is an expectation that you, too, should stay in line, or you are next

What if you were to go with ‘I don’t know what my take is exactly because I don’t have enough information to make a call here – and that’s my take’?

― pomenitul, Monday, December 21, 2020 7:11 PM (eighteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

then if you're lucky you get away with it, if not, or if you have already been deemed bad, you get screenshotted with "lol how can this bitch not know what the call is"

xp Next for what?

next to be screenshotted and mocked, to lose friends and gain enemies, and if it's sufficiently bad, to be reminded of it daily

why type anything if you don't want to? again, is this a specific situation you're trying to navigate?

If you don’t want to have a public opinion... just don’t have one?

Like, even your dichotomy (which I don’t think exists) is a pretty simple scale of gray IMO. Shopping is unavoidable unless you’re rich enough to completely offload risk to delivery people. If you wear a mask and don’t hover over the people around you, good job! If you wear a mask incorrectly, ie dicknose, I’ll roll my eyes at you being a dumbass. If you don’t wear a mask at all I’ll assume you’re an asshole but it shouldn’t be criminalized because cops are generally bad. If you act out and spit on someone, that someone should get to kick your ass while ejecting you from the store but I’d still prefer you just get punched instead of arrested.

Is there anything else going on in the world at all

Katherine...if your opinions are so inflammatory that you risk losing friends over them...maybe they're not actual friends but bored 2D avatars?

I don't mean this condescendingly...it's an honest question: have you ever considered just going totally offline for a couple months to what effect it has on the way you perceive yourself and your immediate surroundings?

to see what effect^

silence is also an option

then if you're lucky you get away with it, if not, or if you have already been deemed bad, you get screenshotted with "lol how can this bitch not know what the call is"

it strikes the people making it as fair and nobody disagrees with it

Nobody? Are you sure?

yes

silence is also an option

as above, when somebody is deemed bad then absolutely nothing that can be said or done to them is considered off-limits

When it comes up so regularly, seems fair to question what is even being talked about.

katherine nobody here is "deeming you bad"

xp I have no idea why you think you’re bad or whatever you’ve done/haven’t done is bad, but I feel pretty confident this thread isn’t going to help you answer any of those things

Equating disagreement to abuse probably doesn’t engender the most level-headed responses either.

Really starting to understand why you get the grief you do, milo. More fool me, I guess.

as above, when somebody is deemed bad then absolutely nothing that can be said or done to them is considered off-limits

I didn't say I didn't find it fair, but even if I didn't, I don't have a choice in the matter

Well I think snitching is cool but I’m not about to say that on the internet

Oops

Snitching to OSHA is good, snitching to the LAPD is not

snitching to the referees always bad

Has there been any credible info on the superstrain claimed by the uk govt yet

i was going to link an article on 'unherd' i just read but then ran across this on their front page and... what the hell

https://unherd.com/2020/12/the-inconvenient-truth-about-transwomen/

so uh, not sure about the 'credibility' of this site

Worst Colin Cowherd spinoff